


tonight.

by mournful_optimist



Category: Bandom, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Album), My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Car Accident, Grief/Mourning, Gun Violence, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, M/M, Medical Situations, Memory Loss, Neurology & Neuroscience, References to Torture, Sibling Incest, Trauma, Violence, references to murder, soulbond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-24
Updated: 2014-07-24
Packaged: 2018-02-10 06:15:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 31,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2014215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mournful_optimist/pseuds/mournful_optimist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gerard hasn’t even been sober for two months when a nuclear blast lays waste to New Jersey and New York in the autumn of 2004. At least Gerard still has Mikey, who he’s been soul-bonded with all of their lives.</p><p>But nothing lasts forever, not even brotherhood. A story about identity, evolution, and being what tomorrow needs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. PROLOGUE: you're the broken glass,

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: entirely fictional interpretation of characters, worlds and events. Please mind the tags/warnings!!!
> 
> This story completely ignores the canon “2019” as the Killjoy timepoint. For my timeline I have used the album release in 2010 as the Danger Days “era” as represented in the videos. (The epilogue occurs shortly before the events of the SING video).
> 
> A world of thanks to the wonderful and endlessly talented akamine_chan, who did the beta work that made this fic what it is.
> 
>  
> 
> This symbol: ~~ denotes a change of scene.  
> Changes of time period/date are marked inside asterisks: ** date **

**** June 30, 2006 ****

 

The Trans Am purrs when he floors it, she loves to burn hard, a Killjoy in her own right. Grace squeals with laughter in the backseat – Gerard is never sure if she’s too young to recognize the danger in having dracs on their tail, or if she’s old enough to know and not give a fuck. Either way he’d rather she was safe somewhere else. This was just a simple supply run, nothing that should have garnered any BL/ind attention.

But ever since Korse put the bounties on their heads, they can barely breathe without SCARECROW knowing. So they handle it. They’re getting pretty good at this part.

Gerard can’t see anything but Frank’s ass in the rearview, where he’s leaning out the t-top to shoot, but he can hear the bikes – Ray’s and Mikey’s sound different from the dracs’ cycles, a lower-pitched rumble thanks to Frank’s constant love and attention. It lets Gerard keep track, because two of their own bikes means his crew is all accounted for.

Until it isn’t.

The dull pop of a blown tire, the sickening crunch of metal scraping over asphalt, and the Killjoys are one bike down. Gerard wants to stop, wants to stand and fight, wants to do _anything_ else, but Grace is in the car, and if the dracs see her, if they take her… she’s just a little girl. When they ask her who her daddy is, she’ll tell them. Once Korse knows there’s another way to Dr. D, forget the dracs and bounty hunters. He’ll be sending tanks. Gerard keeps driving.

Frank is screaming at him from the backseat, begging Gerard to stop, to turn around, why aren’t they stopping?

The sound of their pursuers drops back and back until the Trans Am is alone on the road. Ray and Mikey are a unit, and when one bike goes down the other circles back to check. It’s happened before, with mechanical problems, but never like this, never with a team of dracs right fucking there, shooting at them. But Mikey and Ray are good fighters. They can handle half a dozen dracs. They can, they have to, they’ll be fine. They’ve always been fine before. They’ll fight back, and they’ll be okay. They’ll be okay.

Still, in the dark secret place in his heart Gerard can’t stop himself from praying _notMikeynotMikeyPLEASEletmekeepMikey_. He chooses the long way back because it forces him to stay alert, the rocky back roads will destroy the Trans Am’s suspension again if he isn’t careful about his driving. Grace is crying in the backseat, she hates when people yell. It reminds Gerard she’s just a little kid that’s already seen too much.

When Gerard pulls up to their latest safehouse he stops the car, squeezes his eyes shut and tries to focus. Tries to listen, to tune into the part of his soul labeled _Mikey_ , the place inside where they’re connected.

What he picks up sounds faded and scratchy like bad vinyl, but it’s there, unmistakable: a few bars from the chorus of _Helena_. No vocal track (there never is one) but Gerard knows that song far too well not to fill in the lyrics automatically:

_So long and goodnight._

And then static.

Gerard sits still and quiet, reassuring himself that at least static is something, a sign of life. Frank murmurs indistinct words of comfort to Grace. None of them move to get out of the car.

Long minutes pass, Gerard doesn’t bother to track how many, and the intact bike pulls up next to the Trans Am. Ray pulls off his helmet and shakes his head, eyes downcast. It’s how Gerard knew it would go, but he still feels the bottom drop out of his stomach, and he clings onto the thread of white noise buzzing in the back of his mind, wondering how long it will take until it stops. Gerard hasn’t heard total silence in his head since he was three years old, since the day Mikey was born and he became a _brother_. He wonders idly if the emptiness of it will drive him insane.

“Did you see…?” Frank asks, trying for a normal tone, but with an edge to it that means Frank is on the verge of panic.

Ray swallows hard. “He didn’t wipe out that bad, he was still fighting when I circled back, but.”

“I should go back for the body,” Gerard hears himself say, surprised by how empty his voice sounds, by the fact that he’s spoken at all.

But Ray is shaking his head again. “They loaded him into the van and burnt rubber back towards the City. I tried but – I’m sorry, Gee. I’m so fucking sorry.”

Gerard squeezes his fists tight around the steering wheel until he’s afraid he might snap it. The Killjoys haven’t been running the zones that long, but everyone knew that _taken_ was worse than just _dead_.

He lets the humming static fill his mind and crowd out the pain, the rage, the impossible tearing sorrow. He thinks, _at least I don’t have to explain this to Mom_.

Frank leads Gerard by the arm into the safehouse while Gerard listens closely and waits to hear Mikey die.

  
 


	2. PART ONE: in the morning light,

 

 

****May 27, 1981****

 

Gerard strained up on his toes to get closer, smiling as Mikey fussed and wailed. “He sounds nice.”

Elena laughed lightly, paused in changing Mikey’s diaper to smile at Gerard. Gerard could always make Elena smile. “If you like hearing babies cry, maybe you should be a nanny when you grow up.”

“It’s not that he’s crying,” Gerard frowned, because it wasn’t. The actual sound of the crying was annoying, it woke Gerard up during the night, loud and abrupt from across their little bedroom. “It’s that he’s happy. Mikey’s happiness is pretty.”

Mikey _was_ happy, Gerard was certain of it. Underneath the crying lay the music, lilting and warm and sweet, betraying the fact that Mikey was both pleased and satisfied that he was being taken care of. Gerard knew Mikey liked it best when Elena did the diapers, and when Gerard was nearby as much as possible. Mom said Mikey cried more when Gerard was at kindergarten, and Gerard thought it was true, because Mikey’s songs were sad and lonely then.

“His name is Michael,” Elena corrected gently, finishing up and setting Mikey down to play around on the carpet some more, where he immediately scooted closer to Gerard in his clumsy baby way.

Gerard set his hand on top of Mikey’s wispy blond hair, patted him a little bit the way they both liked. “He’s _Mikey_. He likes Mikey better,” Gerard insisted.

Elena laughed, but Gerard knew it was the truth. One day Mikey would be big enough to agree out loud, but Gerard had the music Mikey made inside his head to go by until then.

 

 

**** September 17, 1996 ****

 

Mikey was riveted, the stage lights reflecting blindingly off his glasses. His eyes were locked on Corgan’s fingers with the kind of rapture most people would find in a church instead of an arena. Gerard had tugged on the sleeve of Mikey’s hoodie a couple of times, trying to get his brother’s attention to see if Mikey had noticed the echo Gerard was hearing. As if behind the music was a single extra guitar playing along with the band, ever-so-slightly out of sync.

The last strains of _Tonight, Tonight_ faded out into the roar of the crowd, and Mikey turned to Gerard, flushed and breathless.

“I wanna do this,” he said, and Gerard needed no explanation of what Mikey meant. _This_ , the concert, the thousands of people singing along with their hearts as much as with their voices.

“Okay, Mikey, we will. We’ll do it,” Gerard promised, without thinking. If it was what Mikey wanted, they would find a way.

Mikey grinned brightly, turned his attention back to the stage.

Gerard put his hand on Mikey’s back and kept it there for the rest of the show. He didn’t bother asking about that mystery guitar. It was obviously just Mikey that Gerard was hearing. Mikey’s soul playing along with the Pumpkins, joyous and free and breathtaking.

 

 

****March 21, 1997****

 

Gerard gripped Mikey’s sleeve and led him through the small clumps of people – the student exhibitions weren’t a huge draw, but there were always friends and family, some faculty – and tugged his brother into the bathroom with him, locking the door. His classmates would probably think he’d brought Mikey in there to fuck, which, assuming they didn’t know Mikey was his brother, was definitely a compliment. (If Gerard was getting laid by someone as awesome as Mikey, he’d be a lot less depressed all the time.) Either way Gerard didn’t give two shits what they thought, because he had a mission. He had to hug Mikey, right away and in private, before the feeling faded and he missed his chance.

As soon as they were inside Gerard flicked the light switch and thumbed the flimsy lock. Mikey started to speak, so Gerard clamped a hand over his brother’s mouth, pressed his face into Mikey’s shoulder. Talking would interrupt, and Gerard needed to listen. The music had started to build while Mikey was looking at Gerard’s triptych of a smoky mountain skyline (he’d promised his teacher it wasn’t Mordor, but it totally was), and fuck, it was _interesting_. The pounding of a piano, low and fast and sinister, overlain with the eerie high-pitched cry of violins, and now there were these drums underneath it all that rumbled like thunder. Gerard loved hearing Mikey’s first reaction to one of his own pieces when it was already finished, and this time it was amazing, filling up Gerard’s chest, warm like good whiskey.

When the sound faded out, almost too quiet to hear, Gerard took his hand away, smiling sheepishly at Mikey’s what-the-fuck eyebrow twitch.

“Sorry. You had all these emotions about my paintings, I just wanted to listen,” Gerard explained. He placed his hand on Mikey’s chest, wishing (not for the first time, nor the last) that he could feel the vibrations of the song under his palm, as if Mikey were a speaker still reverberating.

“Listen?” Mikey’s mouth pulled to the side, confused.

“Yeah?” They’d never spoken of their bond in words, there had never been any need to. Gerard knew that Mikey understood, that Mikey sensed Gerard as much as Gerard sensed Mikey. Their best conversations had always been silent, holding hands on the sagging basement couch in the flickering light from the TV they were staring at but not seeing. If he focused, Gerard could experience Mikey’s thoughts and emotions in their pure form, before language had a chance to turn them clumsy and solid. They’d trade ideas back and forth which Gerard would try to remember later, short riffs of _Mikey_ that Gerard was nowhere near good enough on guitar to ever play. Once in a while he’d manage to express one in a drawing that he could leave on his brother’s pillow, just to remind Mikey he was Gerard’s most precious source of inspiration.

“You – _hear_ me? I don’t…” Mikey frowned. “Really?”

“Of course. It’s like… you’re a radio station I can tune into, and you talk to me with the songs you play. I don’t sound like that?”

“You’re a lighthouse. I’ve always _seen_ you, like a lighthouse.” Mikey said awkwardly, stuffing his hands into the too-small pockets of his girl jeans. “It gets brighter or dimmer, different colours of light, patterns. You beam stuff at me, and I see it.”

Gerard grinned. “That’s so cool. What do I look like now?” He felt pleased, sunny, like maybe he was yellow or a warm pink.

Mikey’s lips quirked up at the corner, on anyone else it would be a smile. “You’re only ever happy in red.”

That was awesome, fuck conventional colour associations. “Blood red?”

Mikey did really smile, then, with teeth. “Fire truck red.”

 

 

**** April 2, 1998 ****

 

He was still at his desk, back aching and hand cramped up around his marker, stomach churning from too much black coffee, when Mikey stumbled down the stairs into their room.

“You’re an asshole. You’ve been blasting the Ramones at me all goddamn night, and I need to have this panel finished for 11am,” Gerard grouched.

Mikey snickered, tossing his keys on his dresser and his jacket on the floor. “That band I saw tonight. Lost my virginity to the drummer in the back of their gear van – what can I say? It was very punk.”

Gerard dropped his marker and gaped at his baby brother, who was hopping around on one foot trying to yank his own boot off like usual. He had no idea what to even say. “I – fuck! Guy drummer or girl drummer?”

Flopping onto Gerard’s bed to give in and untie the laces of his boot the normal way, Mikey grinned widely. “Guy drummer, yes I bottomed, yes he used a condom, yes it hurt but only for a couple minutes. Totally fucking awesome.”

“Shit.” Gerard just had to blink at Mikey for a minute. He didn’t look any different, but Gerard could remember how utterly _changed_ he himself had felt after losing his own virginity, only a year and a half ago – “You are only seventeen, you motherfucker! I couldn’t even get into clubs at your age, and you’re getting fucked in the ass by band members?”

Mikey smirked. “You called being the smart one, I called popular. We shook on it, remember? I’ll teach you how to stop coming off so creepy at parties when _you_ help _me_ pass the SATs.”

“Fucking fine. Just go to sleep so I can work. Or think really hard about werewolves, I have a theme going.”

 

 

****September 11, 2001****

 

A stranger was clutching at his arm, but Gerard couldn’t feel her grip. He was numb, floating. She might as well have been a ghost. He saw the bodies falling from the smoking towers but his brain refused to process the image. It was all lights and ashes and the word _destruction_ sitting heavily in his gut. He didn’t know how long he stood on the ferry, another blank staring face in the crowd, before the screeching wail of feedback erupted in his mind, sudden and overwhelming, like nails on a chalkboard, like a migraine.

His thoughts were slippery and cold, hard to hold onto for more than a second. _It must be on the news_ , he realized. _Mikey thinks I’m there_.

Gerard stumbled through his trip home, following the screaming in his head more than any sense of direction. He tried to signal back to Mikey that he was okay, but he could barely even think, nevermind collect himself enough for a transmission. It was a struggle just to move under the weight of his own horror, of Mikey’s. He found his brother in the dim basement, the afternoon light bleeding through the curtain on the small window just enough to illuminate the curled up figure in Gerard’s bed.

Gerard climbed in, wrapped all his limbs around his brother. Mikey was shaking almost too hard to hold onto, but he gripped Gerard’s sleeve. Mikey’s voice was broken and rough-edged when he sobbed out, “S’dark, so _black_ and I couldn’t see you.”

Gerard rocked Mikey gently, his eyes burning from the jumbled noise filling his brain, mumbled, “I’m alive, Mikes, I’m alive, I’m here, I’m safe, I heard you and you led me home.”

Mikey raised his tearstained face, swallowed, and shifted onto his back, pulling Gerard in against his chest so that Gerard’s ear was pressed over Mikey’s heart. “Block me out,” Mikey whispered, “try to hear that instead.”

Gerard listened closely to the thump of his brother’s heartbeat, timed his breaths to it. “If the world ends, I promise I’ll dye my hair bright red. So you can look at me and remember when we were happy, even if we’re not anymore. I’ll paint everything, I promise you, Mikes. I won’t let it stay black.”

They held onto each other until slowly, slowly, Gerard began to hear the quiver of a guitar string amidst the chaos.

 

 

****October 15, 2004 ****

 

Gerard had never liked the term ‘pale as a ghost’, but it applied now, looking at Frank. Frank was so still, so white, tears rolling silently down his cheeks as he stared up at Brian as if Brian was going to know how to fix the unfixable.

“I – all of it? All of it. But not _gone_ , gone, right? A whole state can’t fucking disappear. Even Hiroshima didn’t do that kind of damage,” Frank was saying, as if maybe there was still any logic to be found anymore.

“It’s fucking leveled, Frankie, I saw it on the news, all right? This isn’t 1944. The bomb-builders of the world must’ve upped their game,” Brian shrugged and took a swig from the fifth of scotch he hadn’t let go of in hours. “NYC, Jersey, and a bunch of shit all around it. It’s the motherfucking apocalypse.”

Gerard had been watching the news earlier, but he had to turn it off. It looked like the set of a cheap sci-fi movie, an uninhabited, desolate wasteland full of buildings crumbling like ash. They could all hear Ray puking in the bathroom. Gerard picked the wrong fucking summer to get sober.

Mikey sat on the floor, curled against the closed bathroom door, hugging his knees to his chest, forehead pressed against the jamb. In the quiet it was easy to hear him despite the softness of his voice as he spoke through the door to Ray.

“I know it’s not okay – I know it’s never going to be okay again,” Mikey was saying, “but we’re alive. Us, right here, we’re still alive, and that means we can’t give up. We haven’t lost everything. Not everything, not yet, so. So I’m gonna be right here by the door, when you’re ready to come out.”

Gerard wiped his eyes and running nose on his sleeve, and went and knelt down next to his brother. Immediately Mikey leaned into him, and Gerard wrapped his arms around Mikey, held on tight. Mikey pressed his face into Gerard’s neck and mumbled into his skin, “We should run, just keep running forever.”

Gerard stroked shaking fingers through his brother’s hair, letting the clattering, mournful sound of Mikey’s confusion soak through him.

 

 ****October 16, 2004 **** (next day)

 

“I’m going, and that’s fucking final, okay?” Bob snapped, stuffing more things into his backpack. “I know what people are saying, I know Chicago’s supposed to be a fucking wreck, but I have to. Even if they’re all dead, I have to fucking try.”

“It’s dangerous,” Brian said flatly. “It’s suicidal.”

“Don’t care,” Bob said, not looking up.

“I’m coming with you,” Brian stated firmly.

Bob stood up so fast he banged his head on the top of his bunk. “ _No_.”

“You have to go, and I’m not letting you go alone. Don’t fucking – don’t tell me you’re surprised.” Brian’s voice dipped soft and low, he said something Gerard couldn’t hear, and then, abruptly, Bob was hauling Brian into a fierce kiss.

That was interesting. Gerard had known they were in love, but he hadn’t thought _they_ knew they were in love yet. But. Clearly he’d been wrong.

Gerard was just starting to plan his escape in case they started fucking in the middle of the bus when Brian broke away, saying, “Pack for me, I’ve gotta talk to Gerard.”

The curtain separating the bunk area dropped closed, and Brian came and sat down next to Gerard on the couch. “Do we have to pretend you didn’t hear all that?”

Gerard shook his head. “I’d tell you we should all go together, but.”

“Mikey,” Brian nodded.

“Yeah.” Gerard felt like shit about it, because Brian was family too, Bob just starting to be, and that mattered. Gerard wanted Bob to find his parents and baby sister, he wanted to help him do that, he really did. Enough to risk his own life trying, even. But not halfway to enough to risk _Mikey’s_ , and Frank’s and Ray’s, and Gerard had no doubts that the three of them would go along in a second if asked. “You won’t tell them it’s an option.”

“It isn’t one,” Brian stated, because he was a good person. A way better person than Gerard, probably. “I’ve heard news that California is the best bet. Supposedly the fallout’s not gonna spread that far, so they should have the cleanest air. Never thought I’d say that about LA, but…”

“It’s on TV that they’re building a sustainable city in the desert, anti-rad shields, generators,” Gerard agreed. “You guys should take the bus. It’ll never get us all the way south, but you might make it.” The gas shortages had already started, people hoarding it like gold. “And Frank seems pretty convinced he knows how to steal a car.”

“Good,” Brian nodded. “Steal as much as you can, avoid leaving a paper trail. I withdrew all your money like you asked, it’s in your bunk in a blue bag.”

“Thanks.” Gerard slumped back into the couch cushions. Carrying around cash would make them a target, but he agreed with Brian that they needed to stay off the grid as much as possible. Gerard already didn’t like the sound of what the government was doing, selling off so-called “non-essential services” to private corporations to pour more money into defense. In Gerard’s opinion the police were pretty damn essential. He’d have to get Mikey to wipe out all their online accounts. Mikey would know how, he was good at computer-y shit. At least he had Mikey, always, to know things, to step up when Gerard couldn’t.

“And get guns, right away. No more pacifist shit. It’s fucking dangerous out there,” Brian ordered.

Gerard shook his head, feeling small and lost. He still remembered vividly the feeling of a gun pressed to the back of his own 15-year-old head, the way his own adrenaline and bile had tasted rising into his mouth. He couldn’t picture himself being the man on the other end of the gun. “I don’t know if I could ever really shoot someone,” he confessed.

“Better learn. You’re the leader, here, and whatever you decide, they’ll follow.”

“I know,” Gerard said. He’d been feeling the weight of it in his shoulders since the news of the bombings had sunk in. The concept became less overwhelming the longer he thought about it, moving the pieces around in his head. His assets. Ray’s perfect memory and eye for details, the only one of them with any concept of geography. Frank could sort-of fix a car and won every fistfight through sheer unwillingness to acknowledge pain until the job was done. Mikey’s almost disturbing pull over social situations and affinity for electronics. Everyone around Gerard seemed to have been building all these useful skills while Gerard had been going through life oblivious.

Gerard thought of one time when Mikey was twelve, sitting in the driveway listening to their dad lecture them on how they should _at least learn to change their own oil, goddammit_. He remembered rolling his eyes, thinking there would always be time for crap like that, going back to reading the latest issue of Batman over Mikey’s shoulder. Because for all his talking about the apocalypse he never truly _believed_ in it, thinking his biggest demons would always come in a book or a pill or a bottle. Stupid, when he’d already seen how shitty the world could be.

But he had his band. It was more than he ever deserved.

“You’ll take care of each other,” Brian said. It wasn’t a question. Gerard appreciated that.

 

 

**** February 12, 2005 ****

 

Ray stared up at the sign, drawing Gerard’s eye to it.

 

_This premises protected by:_

_Safer_ _Spaces Security: a Better Living Industries subsidiary_

_24 hour monitoring_

_We can handle it from here!_

 

“We’re all going to prison,” Ray sighed. “Creepy corporate prison, where all four of us will end up blowing neo-Nazis for cigarettes. We wrote that song, it’s karma.”

“Shut up,” Frank hissed. He was holding up a flashlight for Mikey, who was curled into the corner next to the door, typing away on the laptop that was starting to become a permanent fixture in his hands. They’d stolen it two states ago, and Mikey had been fiddling around with it in the backseat of the car ever since, adding bits and pieces to it until it was a frankenmachine, clumsy-looking but as much an instrument to Mikey now as his bass had ever been.

Fucking Mikey, growing up from fixing their Nintendo to pirating Disney movies to hacking corporate security systems. Best little brother in the goddamn world.

“I’ll give your blowjobs for you,” Gerard whispered to Ray, patting him on the arm. His hand looked weird and dead inside the latex glove, but he didn’t like the idea of any of them leaving fingerprints. He bit the inside of his cheek, the tiny bite of pain grounding him and drowning out the nervousness. The four of them were all crammed into the alcove around the door, where Mikey had insisted the security cameras couldn’t see them. Gerard had no idea if that was true or not, but Mikey had sounded pretty confident.

“Sweet of you,” Ray murmured back. “Do you think he really has any idea what –"

“Done,” Mikey announced quietly.

Gerard expected something more exciting, but it was just Mikey disconnecting the cords he’d used to jack the laptop into the security panel, and Frank testing the door cautiously. It opened. All right then.

“You two stay here and watch for cops,” Frank said, slipping inside after Mikey.

“I don’t like this,” Ray shook his head. “We don’t even have walkie-talkies or anything, how are we even supposed to warn them if cops do show up? We should have done this the same way as before.”

“We need something good,” Gerard argued, not for the first time. “No more junkers. It costs us too much time.” The mechanic’s garage had been Frank’s idea, because it had less security than a dealership and at least some of the cars would already have been checked over and fixed up. Not so shiny and new and incriminating. Gerard was proud of Frank’s plan. The four of them were going to be fucking criminal masterminds soon, the rate they were going. “And I’ll know if they need help.”

Gerard didn’t realize he’d said something strange until Ray was staring at him. “ _How_ , exactly?”

Gerard briefly toyed with the idea of lying, or brushing it off as a joke, but Ray knew him too well for that. “I know when Mikey needs me, okay? I can’t explain it. I just sense him, his emotions and shit.”

Ray arched an eyebrow suspiciously. Gerard didn’t blame him, it sounded ridiculous out loud, but he’d never tried to explain it to anyone before. “Like one of those freaky twin mindmeld things?”

“Yeah,” Gerard breathed, his relief like a physical thing, larger and more vital than he’d thought it would be. He didn’t know he’d been so scared about what would happen if someone else knew. “I don’t feel his pain or anything, and we aren’t twins, obviously. But it’s like that. A connection.”

There was a funny twist to Ray’s lips when he smiled, but his eyes were warm like always. “I guess that kind of explains a lot? I don’t know. Weird as it is, I can’t say I’m that surprised. You and Mikey…” He shrugged, trailing off.

They didn’t say much for a few minutes, leaning awkwardly against the brick exterior of the building, watching the street. Gerard was listening so closely for indicators that Mikey needed help that he was jolted back to reality when Ray gripped his arm.

“Did you hear that?” Ray hissed.

“Hear wha-" Before the words had fully left his mouth, Gerard noticed it – the rumble of motorcycles coming from the west. “Could just be people,” he whispered, knowing it was unlikely. Motorcycles were banned, now. Only the Better Living security troops had them, bright white like their uniforms.

Anything too white or too clean was becoming suspicious.

Ray slipped the door open quietly, and Gerard followed him into the shop. They held hands, moving cautiously through the shadowed reception area. Gerard concentrated on letting Mikey know they were coming. There was the familiar frustration of not being able to _talk_ , to use words, but they had always made do before. A soft hum let him know Mikey got the message.

The garage area was dark and cramped, cars looming like monsters up on jacks. It wasn’t long before they heard a metallic clank, Frank’s muffled, “Motherfucker,” and Mikey’s quiet laughter, and were able to follow the sound to the far end of the garage.

Frank had his head and shoulders under the hood of a black SUV, but all Gerard could see when he got close was the car to the left of it. A vintage model Trans Am, shiny silver-white and perfect. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the lines of its body. He’d never been that much of a car guy, but he felt his dick twitch in his jeans just looking at her.

Behind him, Mikey giggled. “Check the records on the Trans Am, Frankie. Before Gee comes in his pants.”

“What? Oh – _oh_. You sure? Little flashy for being on the run,” Frank said skeptically.

“If it’s working, it’s the one,” Mikey replied firmly.

“I love you,” Gerard said, not knowing if he was talking to his brother or the Trans Am.

 

 

**** March 3, 2005 ****

 

It could have been some weird cosplay, could have all been a cheap fake. The cop had a white rubber mask on, and the gun was plastic, it felt like a toy pressed up under Gerard’s chin. But Gerard’s fear was definitely real, his hands shaking as he fumbled at the holster strapped to his hip. He couldn’t get the clasp open, not that it mattered now, there was no time to draw the pistol out, the shiny new semi-automatic he hadn’t even _used_ yet, fuck. They were stupid. He was going to die stupid.

He shut his eyes, held his breath.

The crack of the gunshot sounded just like it used to on TV, but fucking _loud_ , and something warm spattered across Gerard’s cheek.

He opened his eyes.

Mikey was standing there, revolver in hand like a goddamn cowboy, and the cop was on the ground with a hole in its head and a pool of blood spreading out around it.

“Shit,” Gerard gasped, letting his head thunk back against the concrete wall behind him. “ _Shit_.”

“It’s okay,” Mikey said, using the edge of his sleeve to wipe at the blood and whatever-else on Gerard’s face (he tried not to think of the word _brains_ ). Gerard felt the gentle pressure in his mind that meant Mikey was checking in, and Gerard pressed back, opening their connection wide.

Mikey’s bass line rushed in like a freight train, fast and throbbing with worry, but the guitars said so much more – fierce shredding, pure and aggressive.

Mikey was _excited_. Even a little proud of himself.

Gerard dropped to his knees next to the corpse and puked.

 

 

**** May 28, 2005 ****

 

“This is an excellent choice of rendezvous point, Gee. I am absolutely not creeped out, and there is a very low chance we will get fucking murdered down here,” Ray muttered, sarcasm dripping thickly from every syllable.

“You’re supposed to call me Party Poison now,” Gerard corrected. Although Ray had a point about the location. A fan was blowing somewhere, and the whirr echoed eerily against the crumbling concrete and exposed piping. He’d never felt all that comfortable in underground parking garages _before_ the fall of civilization, nevermind now. He gripped his gun a little tighter.

“I hear footsteps, _Party Poison_ ,” Ray whispered, squinting into the dimness.

Gerard didn’t hear any, but Ray’s hearing was better than his own. “It’ll be them.”

“Well what if it’s not?”

They were taking another stupid risk, being there, an unnecessary risk. It wasn’t that Gerard didn’t understand that Frank needed this, to preserve the crumbling photos of his family he had left, but it wasn’t safe anywhere anymore. Maybe it would be better when they finally got to Battery City, but Gerard was starting to have doubts.

Nothing was as perfect as Better Living was saying Battery City would be.

By the time Gerard could hear the footsteps too, he and Ray had their guns raised and trained in the direction of the sound, and Gerard’s heart was in his throat –

It was Frank and Mikey, obviously. Bad guys never showed up when Gerard was actually ready for them. Frank looked like he’d just come back from an orgy instead of a tattoo appointment, sweaty and smiling ear to ear, his whole right arm wrapped in gauze that Gerard didn’t even want to look at. Oddly, Mikey looked flushed too, and he was walking awkwardly, favouring his left foot a little. Gerard holstered his gun and checked into their connection to find that Mikey was playing the Super Mario theme music. The fuck?

“All is well my fellow Killjoys,” Frank announced as soon as he was close enough. “Fun times were had, virginities were lost…”

Gerard looked at Mikey, then back at Frank. “Did you have sex with _my little brother_?”

Mikey cocked an eyebrow enigmatically, but Frank snorted a laugh. “If I ever fuck a dude, I promise you’ll be my first,” Frank promised, grabbing Gerard’s hand and kissing his palm flirtatiously. “I pulled The Great and Spectacular Kobra Kid over to the dark side, got him his first tattoo.”

“You got a tattoo?” Gerard stares at Mikey. He didn’t know about this – why wasn’t he told?

“Show them!” Frank insisted, bouncing on his heels.

Mikey bent down and pulled up his pant leg, peeling back the bandage and twisting his knee awkwardly to give Gerard a good view. Even all angry-red and brand new, Gerard had to admit it wasn’t bad. It was a cobra, poised to strike, its face and upper body on Mikey’s calf and the tail winding around his ankle.

“What do you think?” Mikey looked at Gerard, eyebrow arched and lips curled up at the corner. He looked a little wary of Gerard’s reaction, but underneath it, he was obviously pleased with himself, all smug post-punk and little-brother-got-there-first pride.

Gerard sighed and smiled. Whatever, as long as Mikey was happy. “It’s cool, Mikes.”

Mikey beamed back at him, and Gerard’s heart swelled with it. He loved his brother so goddamn much. Every so often it would just rush over him in a tidal wave of deep affection and fondness.

Ray hummed awkwardly. “You know I named you after the Mortal Kombat character, right? Kobra with a K?”

Mikey laughed, replacing the bandage and tugging his pant leg back down. “I know dude, I just liked it. I thought it was kinda badass.”

Frank slung a comforting arm around Mikey’s shoulders. “It’s very badass, y’know, for your _first_. It’s a long road from here my friend, you have the itch now. When I was your age -”

“I’m older than you.”

“Shut up. You’re driving, I call Ray for a pillow. I’m gonna fall asleep any second. The pain endorphins are wearing off.”

 

~~

 

Gerard tried to fluff his jacket into a more pillow-like configuration, but no matter what he tried, it remained uncomfortable. He gave up, shoving it down into the footwell. He hated riding upfront when he was tired, but Frank had _insisted_ he needed to pass out. Gerard checked the rearview, and Frank was sleeping with his head in Ray’s lap. Lucky motherfucker. Ray just smiled at Gerard, zoned out and peaceful with his headphones on.

“At least Ray’s not snoring,” Mikey offered, breaking the quiet.

“Yeah.” Gerard looked at Mikey critically. He still expected Mikey to look altered after big events, like maybe he would finally come-of-age and become a stranger. But it was the same Mikey as always, with that weird hunched posture he got when he was driving. “You’re okay driving, right? It doesn’t hurt, the tattoo?”

“Not much.” Mikey frowned a little, a small transient thing. “You know you can tell me if you think it’s stupid.”

Gerard shook his head and made himself smile. “It’s not stupid, Mikes. I just thought… I don’t know. That you’d tell me first. I would’ve…”

Mikey rolled his eyes. “What, come with me? Held my hand and pretended not to have a panic attack about all the needles?”

“I would’ve drawn you something!” Gerard blurted, then blushed and covered his eyes with his hand. He was the lamest older brother in the _entire world_.

“Gee,” Mikey said affectionately, and reached over to tug on a stray strand of Gerard’s hair. Ever since they’d dyed it red Mikey seemed to touch it all the time. “You’re making art in my brain every second of the day. It’s not like I need something to remember you by. This was just for fun – not everything has to mean something.”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry,” Gerard smiled ruefully, looking out the window, watching farmland roll by. “What colours do you see when I’m embarrassed?”

“It’s kind of sparkly, but, like, brown. What do I sound like when I think you’re lame?”

“Flutes and weird electronica.”

“You’ve never understood electronic music,” Mikey criticized.

“Sure, it’s not that you have bad taste, I just don’t _understand_ it…”

 

 

**** June 8, 2006 ****

 

He squinted into the dimness when he heard the door to the bedroom – once the diner’s back office – ease open and then shut. The dawn light seeping weakly through the blackout curtains was barely enough to see by, but when it was Mikey, a silhouette was sufficient.

Mikey reeked of alcohol and other people’s sweat, and when he stripped off his clothes they hit the floor with a wet slap. No pain in Mikey’s music, though, just a dull ache, full of weary cellos. Not drunk, either, despite the smell.

Their bed was just an old musty mattress on the floor with worn blankets, the same as Frank and Ray’s on the other side of the shelving unit that divided the room, but it didn’t matter when they were in it together. When Mikey crawled in and spooned up behind Gerard, his skinny arm heavy around Gerard’s waist, it was plenty comfortable.

Gerard elbowed Mikey in the ribs, but not hard. “You were supposed to be home by sunset, where the fuck were you?”

Mikey huffed, his breath hot and damp on the back of Gerard’s neck. “I told you, I was with The Blue Aces. I got caught up.”

“It doesn’t take _two and a half days_ to install a surveillance system. Which one of them are you sleeping with?” Gerard demanded in a whisper, keeping his voice low enough not to wake Frank. “You smell like an orgy.”

He could hear the smirk in Mikey’s voice. “Azure, Oxford, and Cobalt. But it wasn’t an orgy, it was just regular sex, and then a threesome.”

“Damn. I thought Cobalt didn’t like you?”

“She doesn’t.” Mikey cuddled in closer, tucking his bony knees in behind Gerard’s. Sometimes it was overwhelming, the way Gerard needed his brother there. He wouldn’t be himself without Mikey.

“You know how Ray freaked when we got arrested that time, because he said we were being punished for writing a song about prison rape?” Gerard asked, fitting his fingers in between Mikey’s where they were resting on his chest. When he felt Mikey nod, he continued, “Sometimes when you’re away, I think about The Ghost Of You. It’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid,” Mikey mumbled, tucking his face into the nape of Gerard’s neck, getting comfortable. “But I’ve always come home so far.”

Gerard fell asleep hoping that would always remain true.

 

 


	3. PART TWO: be a burning star,

 

**** August 9, 2006 ****

 

“Is Poison sick? He never used to sleep this much.” Gerard can hear the frown in Grace’s voice.

Ray shushes her, but it’s too late. The haze Gerard had been floating in, that blurred edge between sleep and wakefulness, is broken by the sound. Mikey’s phantom arms fade away, leaving Gerard alone in the bed.

It feels like a new loss every time.

Gerard is so tired these days. It’s the music, heavy and bogged down, making the world feel foggy. Surreal. Difficult.

He could block it out, but he doesn’t. It’s better than nothing.

Gerard puts all his spare energy into trying to _transmit_. It’s not something he’s ever had to work so hard for, but it’s too important now. Mikey is weakened and afraid, and Gerard has a responsibility.

He’s supposed to be a lighthouse.

It’s been thirty-nine days and Gerard still has no leads, no clue how to find Mikey and bring him home, but at least he can do this. Gerard can make sure he’s burning bright. He can make sure Mikey knows he’s loved.

It’s what Gerard was built for.

 

~~

 

“Nothing? Still?” Gerard’s skin feels too tight, itchy with even more sand and dust than usual. He’s been hunting the desert for weeks, picking off spy drones and keeping up his end of the deal, assuming Dr. Death Defying could keep up his. Apparently not.

Dr. D leans back in his chair, fingers tapping restlessly on the arms. “I have things in motion. The kind of information you’re looking for takes time, Party. Relax.”

“Relax.” Gerard lets the word fall flat between them. He’s never heard a suggestion more fucking impossible. Dr. D might as well ask him to grow wings and fly. “If it was Grace, you’d shoot me where I fucking stand for telling you that. SCARECROW has my – has _Kobra_ – who, by the way, knows exactly where we fucking are, and Korse knows it. We don’t _have_ time. How long did they keep Persephone?”

It’s an unspoken rule never to speak of Persephone in front of the Doc. Dr. D’s knuckles go white on the arms of his chair, but Gerard’s never been any good at subtlety. There’s a tense silence. Dr. D’s jaw twitches.

“Little more than a month.”

Mikey’s been gone almost twice that long, and it’s only been Dr. D’s promises of _soon, we’ll have information soon_ that’s kept Gerard from losing his shit completely. He sees Persephone’s grave marker behind his eyelids every time he tries to sleep. “I protected Grace. Korse has Kobra because _I protected Grace_ and you. Will. Find. Him. You owe me your daughter’s life twice-over now and you tell me to _relax?"_ Gerard shouts the last word, and hears Show Pony gasp from where he’s been hiding, listening behind the doorway.

The veins in Dr. D’s forehead are standing out, his face flushed. “I am handling it. I have people who know people. Cool your jets, Poison, remember which of us is in charge,” he hisses.

Gerard brings a hand to his holster, and watches Dr. D mirror the movement. “Find Kobra, or I will turn on you myself,” he says coolly. He half expects one of Dr. D’s minions to try to stop him from leaving, but no one gets in his way.

 

~~

 

It’s a quiet day, bright and windless. Gerard stands carefully in the shadow of the E on the diner’s roof, and still he’s grateful that he grabbed Mikey’s sunglasses on his way up. Summer makes the afternoon watch shift brutal, but Gerard doesn’t mind as much today. Below him, Frank and Ray are working on the Trans Am, unprotected from the baking sun, which has to be worse than up on the roof. He doesn’t exactly intend to listen in on their conversation, but the sound carries easily on such a clear day, and the signal from Mikey has been quiet and indistinct for hours.

“…can’t let him live in denial forever. We’ve gotta make him deal with his feelings,” Frank is saying. “I miss Mikey too, but this isn’t healthy. He needs to grieve.”

Ray makes a thoughtful sound. “I don’t know. He seems so certain Mikey’s alive. The two of them have always been weird, I think – I think maybe Gee really would know, somehow, if Mikey was dead.”

Frank scoffs, banging the hood of the car shut. “He’d never let himself believe it. He’ll stay in denial until we make him face up to it.”

“Maybe,” Ray admits with a sigh. “But not yet. Call me naïve, but I still think there might be a chance? Let Gee hope a little while longer, just in case.”

“Fine,” Frank says reluctantly. “But I don’t like it. We shouldn’t even still be staying here, if they got our location out of Mikey we’re fucking screwed …”

Gerard lets his attention stray from his friends’ voices, and drift back toward his bond with Mikey. He’s still receiving only a faint jumble of sound, nothing concrete enough to interpret. Not for the first time, Gerard wishes their connection went the other way – he wants to _see_ Mikey, and he wants to sing to him.

_So long NOT goodnight, you fucker. You’d better hang on until I find you._

 

~~

 

Gerard sits on the floor and pulls the box toward himself, into the vee of his splayed legs. It’s scraps only, the intact record collection is kept in the vault in the back, safe and protected from even the select zonerunners that are allowed into Dr. D’s bunker. Gerard likes to look anyway, sifting his hand through the ruined remains of old vinyl. And he needs something to pass the time until Dr. D gets back.

Ray disappeared a while ago, grabbing Show Pony by the hand and rolling him along on his skates down the short hallway. They steal every affordable opportunity to run off together and fuck. It reminds Gerard of those wheeled IV stands they used to have in hospitals that patients could pull behind themselves and remain attached to. Ray and Pony are a lot like that, really. It's like whatever it is that Ray gets from Pony, he can only have in sudden doses, delivered straight into the vein in the hopes it will last until the next time.

Gerard would accept Pony into the Killjoys without hesitation, but Pony belongs to Dr. D, belongs _with_ Dr. D, seems happy here. Most people don’t ever meet Pony, nevermind get to know him like Ray has, but the Killjoys have some pull with the Doc. They’ve worked their way up. Most crews of ‘runners periodically try to court favour with Dr. D by making supply runs for him, little stuff like that, and Dr. D slowly accepts some of the more reliable crews for bigger jobs. Assisting with moves when the bunker has to relocate, guard duty.

The Killjoys got in good with the Doc when Ray worked out the kinks in the mixing board. Then Mikey patched the generator’s worn-out wiring when it was malfunctioning and the station nearly dropped signal, and the Killjoys were allowed to meet Grace for the first time. When Persephone came back to the zones a ghost, and Dr. D just couldn’t bear to pull the trigger on his baby girl’s mom, Frank and Gerard made the hit. Only then did they begin to get tapped for babysitting. One of Gerard’s favourite things about the ‘zones is the straightforwardness. Trust is earned, always, and you’d better not fuck it up.

A sudden high screech of violin makes Gerard’s breath catch. It stings deep down in his mind, but it’s barely a surprise at this point. Mikey’s agony flickers in and out at random intervals these days. There’s nothing Gerard can do except try not to make it worse, which means pushing down his own emotions. The rage frightens Mikey, but it’s automatic – BL/ind is torturing Gerard’s brother. It’s funny how Gerard used to think he understood _revenge_. He hadn’t even grasped the concept back then.

“Please tell me that’s not his only copy,” begs a voice from behind him.

Gerard turns. It’s just DecayDance, looming even though he’s a short fucker. In the background, Dr. D is leading Stereo Nova into the inner office, the two of them conversing in low secret murmurs.

“Come on, don’t tell me you don’t like that album,” Decay insists.

Gerard looks down. He’s holding a scratched-to-shit copy of _The White Album_. He sets it aside. “Two pristine copies in the vault,” he answers blankly. He doesn’t hate Decay, but the dude can be taxing at the best of times, and Gerard’s concentration is split. Most of his mind is busy with Mikey.

Unfortunately Decay doesn’t take the hint, squatting down a few feet away with a jaunty, “Fancy meeting you here.” The real problem is, Gerard and Decay already have an understanding between them, and Gerard can’t be too much of an asshole if he isn’t prepared to break the truce and face the consequences. Allies are difficult to come by lately with Korse always tracking them, and Decay is well-connected and almost universally liked, which makes him valuable to know.

It’s always messy to meet someone in the ‘zones that you knew before the war. DecayDance leads the Youngbloods, and Party Poison has to deal with him when the two crews cross paths. Gerard wishes Pete Wentz had less distinctive eyes, or he wouldn’t have known who was underneath the disguise of wild black dreads and thick beard, and they wouldn’t have this awkwardness, this _I know who you are_ tension.

Gerard tosses his head to get his filthy red hair out of his eyes. “What do you want, Decay?” Best to set the terms at the beginning.

“Heard you’re looking for information. I might have a line on something,” Decay says.

His heart pounds. Anything would help, it’s been so long. But Gerard keeps a neutral expression. “Might?”

Decay shuffles closer, too close for Gerard’s comfort, but more private. Even in safe places, you can’t be too careful, and Gerard can respect that. “I’ve got a group of dudes I’m working on phasing out of the City.” He drops his voice even quieter, “A band.”

Gerard sucks in a breath, ignores the distracting whine of woodwinds in the back of his head to focus on the uncomfortable level of trust he’s being faced with. A band is a big fucking deal. The records are sacred, but the ability to make new music is the holiest commodity a ‘runner can have. Holy enough that he’s sitting next to a fellow former frontman and it’s the biggest secret either of them possesses.

Musicians were the first victims of BL/ind’s Civilian Re-education Program, and only the visual artists got it half as bad. BL/ind can’t take the risk of letting people _feel_ again, or remind each other what independent thought is like. Reports out of the City say that lately, just whistling on your way to work is enough to be slapped with a Disruptive Nonconformance charge.

“What’s the deal?” Gerard asks Decay.

“I get them out here, I’m gonna need the Killjoys to help me get them situated as an independent crew.”

That would mean some big raids, dangerous ones. Setting up as a new crew takes equipment, supplies, knowledge, vehicles, a home base. No small task, but Gerard has a feeling there’s more. He arches an eyebrow at Decay, waiting.

“Fine. And maybe some of your specific…services. I have what they’ll need,” Decay twitches, and Gerard bites his own tongue, because he knows what that means, “but I could use Jet Star for a couple days’ work.”

Fuck. Gerard can read between the lines - Decay has _instruments_ , at least a couple guitars, but they need repairs. He’s shocked, because he didn’t think the Youngbloods had that kind of pull, but it should be within Ray’s skillset to do the job. It’s a relief. Gerard would fucking set Decay on fire for a decent lead on Mikey, he doesn’t give two shits, but if Gerard promises something and doesn’t deliver it, the retaliation would be severe. Someone’s head on a pole outside the diner severe.

Zonerunners take honor really fucking seriously.

“Two raids, two days worth of work from Jet Star,” Gerard says firmly, “If and _only_ if your intel gets me to the Kobra Kid.”

Decay’s expression hardens. Negotiation time, then. “Two _major_ raids, one week of Jet working on _our_ premises, and Ghoul rebuilds Nova’s bike. If I can tell you how to get to Kobra Kid. Getting out alive is your own damn problem.”

“Two major raids, four repairs total from my guys. The bike counts as one if you want it. Jobs get done in full on Killjoy territory, or here if Dr. D agrees.” Gerard takes a breath, and pitches his voice low, “If Kobra Kid comes back alive, I throw in six lessons for your new crew if they need them.”

Decay actually grins, wide and manic, and leans in so close that Gerard can smell Power Pup on his breath. “Not lessons. Songs. Brand new, nothing ever recorded or played in a concert. Four.”

“Two. You pick the style.”

“Done. You’ll hear from me in five days or less with the intel.” Decay holds out a hand, and Gerard shakes it. A binding contract in the ‘zones.

“Faster I get what I need, faster and better your work gets done.” Gerard points out.

The grin doesn’t falter. “Understood. I always liked the Kid, y’know. Cute.”

Decay shifts back and stands up. Gerard turns back to the box of records between his knees. The fragment of vinyl on top of the stack is a piece of _Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness_. Gerard hangs onto it, and tries not to interpret it as a sign.

 

~~

 

It only takes three days. DecayDance moves fast.

A scrap of paper with a time and an encrypted frequency code slipped into Frank’s hand at the swap meet, and the Killjoys have a date with the radio that evening. The sun is down and the acid rain sizzling and smoking in gentle patterns against the roof when they tune in. Ray deciphers the code, works the dials with his thick sure fingers until there’s a crackle and a hiss and a voice.

"Is this Party Poison?" It’s a female voice, young, with an unfamiliar accent.

Gerard takes a breath, straightens his posture. Falls into character. “Yes. Who are you?”

“Someone who can help,” the woman says impatiently. “I have info on a man, mid-twenties, brunet, skinny, snake tattoo around his left calf and ankle. I heard Party Poison was moving hell and earth looking for this guy. Correct?"

“Yes.” Gerard keeps his tone even. It could be dangerous to sound relieved, or enthusiastic. This could easily be a trap, could even get Mikey killed, but it’s risk they need to take. Hopefully Decay knows what the fuck he’s doing. “Tell me what you know.”

“Snake Boy is a political prisoner needing extraction,” the woman says coolly. “We’re looking for a crew who can pull it off without making a scene. Can you handle that?”

“If it’s really my guy, I can handle whatever you’ve got. Did he give you our code word? Let me talk to him.” Gerard demands.

“He doesn’t know any code.” She replies, quieter and sounding almost sorry. It’s ominous as hell, and Gerard’s stomach churns. “He’s at Healing Hands Hospital, in the Research Division. That’s –"

“SCARECROW.” Gerard interrupts, swallowing hard. _Research_ was where people got ghosted, or drac’ed. He covers his mouth with his hand to muffle the stream of curses he can’t keep inside. “Is he okay?” Gerard asks quickly.

“ _Okay_ is a complex concept. He’s alive. Four limbs, ten fingers, ten toes. And to confirm I have the right guy," She pauses. “When he’s sleeping he does this thing with his fingers, like he’s playing the piano or something. That ring any bells?”

The image that springs to Gerard’s mind is painfully clear: Mikey at fourteen, curled up on his side on Elena’s old living room couch, fast asleep. His fingers twitching like he was playing air guitar. “That’s him. I assume he didn’t give you a name.”

“He doesn’t know it,” she says bluntly. “They wiped out a lot of his memory. He knows who the Chairwoman is and that he’s got someone in the Outlying Zones who would come to his rescue. That’s pretty much it.”

Frank leans over, closer to the mic. “I don’t mean to cut in here, but if he’s been in Research, is it safe to take him out? I mean, he’s not a ghost, right?”

The word _ghost_ hits Gerard right in the chest. He feels like he can’t breathe.

“I don’t deal in ghosts,” she says sharply, and Gerard exhales slowly. “But unless your boy breaks soon, they're gonna turn him into one. SCARECROW will wipe just as much memory as it takes to crack a person. Ghosts are wiped all the way clean, they’re just empty meat robots taught how to kill. Snake Boy isn’t there yet, but it’s where he’s headed. Want to come and extract him before that happens?”

“Yes,” Gerard says immediately. “Yes, of course. Tell me how.”

“In about eight days – I’ll radio the night before to confirm – they're gonna move Snake Boy out of Research to the Neurosurgery Recovery Ward, it’s an ICU on the tenth floor, west end of the building. I’ll send you a security key-card with all the codes you’ll need to get in without tripping any alarms, plus the guard schedule. You get in, get your boy, and get out – quietly, you understand? This is delicate ops.”

Gerard’s head is buzzing with new information, and he’s so tired but he can’t afford to get emotional until the job is finished and Mikey is home. There’s too much that could still go wrong. “His name is Michael. Will you tell him? That he’s Michael and his family is coming for him?”

The woman sounds a little choked up when she replies, “I will.”

 

~~

 

The key-card slot blinks white and the service elevator door slides open silently. A quiet computerized voice proclaims, “Tenth floor access: granted. Keep smiling!" 

Gerard leads the way into the painfully-bright hallway, fluorescent lights humming overhead making it seem like another planet. He strides forward confidently, in his mask and heavy boots it’s easy to be Party Poison and not himself, just like when he used to change into his show clothes before a concert. There’s a middle-aged lady in grey scrubs at the computer terminal. Poison grabs her smoothly by the throat, puts his gun to her temple and purrs into her ear, “Do you wanna die, honey?”

She shakes her head ‘no’, slowly. She’s trembling in his hold. Good.

“Well then you won’t make any noise, or sound any alarms, because that would mean I’d have to blow your brains out all over this nice clean floor. Understand?” She nods. She looks like she’s about to faint. Poison just grips her tighter. “What you are gonna do is take me to the Neurosurgery Recovery Ward. You know where that is?”

He feels the woman swallow under his palm and loosens his grip on her neck just enough that she can nod again. “Lovely,” he says sweetly, and shoves her to get her walking.

Ghoul and Jet flank him instinctively, Poison can feel them as easily as if they were extensions of his body. It’s a short walk to the sliding doors with **WARD 21** painted on them in stark block lettering, and they see no other staff. For now.

“I don’t,” the woman croaks softly, haltingly. “I don’t have a key to this door.” She sounds terrified, and Poison grins. 

“No problem honey, I’ve got it covered,” he says, and swipes his card. White light, and the doors sweep open like magic.

Once inside, he has to blink to clear his vision. The ward is much dimmer than the hallway, with blue light emanating from the walls, but Poison can’t bother with details. That's Jet's department. He spins the woman around to face him. She’s pale and shaking again, but when he tilts her chin up with his gun, she manages to meet his gaze. He pushes his mask up into his hair so she can see his face. “There is a patient in this room you are gonna help me find. Patient number 881962. A man about my age, dark hair, snake tattoo on his leg. If you help me I won’t hurt you.”

“Poison?” Ghoul calls out from a few paces back. “You’ve gotta see this. Jesus motherfucking Christ.”

Ghoul is held rapt, gun held loosely at his side. Poison follows his line of sight, and has to blink to believe what he sees. It’s not the walls that glow – the entire room is lined with clear pods that look like upright caskets, each one emitting the dim blue light, and in each one is a person. They’re all held in a standing position and perfectly still, naked and apparently unconscious. Frank is standing in front of an old woman, small and frail, electrodes stuck to her forehead and tubes protruding from her mouth and nose. Screens at waist level display a constant stream of numbers, the majority of which mean nothing to Poison, although he recognizes a few. Blood pressure, temperature.

“Like lab rats,” Ghoul breathes. “They look like fucking lab rats.”

“Explain this,” Poison growls to the woman, shaking her by the shoulders. “What are these?”

“Critical Care Capsules,” she says automatically, as if reciting from a script. “For the patients who have to be sedated and monitored in a contained environment to avoid disrupting the - um, the experiments.”

Jet laughs humorlessly behind Poison. “BL/ind sure loves their alliterations.”

“Experiments,” Ghoul growls under his breath. “I seriously fucking hate this place.”

“Do you know how to open them? Can you wake a patient up?” Poison asks, and the woman nods. Good.

It’s Jet who finds Mikey’s capsule, and Poison drags the woman over to it, staring into the blue-lit space. Mikey’s painfully skinny and bruised nearly everywhere but it’s _him_ , and he’s _breathing_ , trapped inside the enclosed space and the grip of chemical sleep. Poison has to bite down on his lip to keep from sliding back into Gerard and getting emotional as he approaches. Closer up it’s both better and worse, and Poison has to swallow back the rage that rises in his throat. Mikey’s cheeks are sunken in, and the sides of his head have been shaved to make way for thick lines of stitches that are too uniform to be anything but intentional. Of course – they’re in the Neurosurgery Recovery Ward. He should have expected as much.

“Get him out of this thing,” Poison orders through gritted teeth, shoving the woman forward. “Wake him up.”

The woman edges sideways cautiously, and checks the displays as if by habit. She presses a button, and the capsule begins to move with the soft whir of hydraulics. Poison steps back as the capsule shifts horizontal, settling at waist height like a normal hospital bed. More buttons, a swipe of the woman’s keycard, and the lid lifts and opens. And there’s Mikey, and Poison can reach out and take his brothers hand while the woman fiddles around removing tubes and peeling the sticky parts of electrodes away from Mikey’s scalp and chest. Mikey’s hand is cool and sweat-damp, so Poison covers it with his own, tries to warm it up.

“It takes a moment,” she says softly, and steps back.

Mikey blinks his eyes open and fuck, they’re so familiar and so beautiful. “Mikes,” Gerard whispers, sliding back into himself, holstering his gun.

“Um,” Mikey rasps, his voice sounding dull and underused. He squints at Gerard, foggy-eyed. “Hi?”

“Shit, where are your glasses? Fr- um, Fun Ghoul, find his glasses?” Gerard fumbles, squeezing Mikey’s hand when Mikey tries to pull it away. No fucking way he’s letting go.

“I don’t need glasses. Who are you?” Mikey asks, pushing up onto his elbows. He looks wary of Gerard but lets him hold his hand anyway. It’s a start.

“I’m, uh, Party Poison. We’re your family, me and these two guys – not the lady, I think she’s a nurse? But. But you call me Gee. _Mikey_ , fuck it’s so good to see you.” Gerard says in a rush. He can’t stop staring. Mikey may look like he’s been run over by a truck but Gerard has never been happier to see anybody in his life.

“Gee,” Mikey says experimentally, like he’s testing how the name feels in his mouth. “Help me up.”

Gerard reaches down to put his arms around his brother carefully, he seems to be all bones and bruises and shiny pink scars that Gerard can’t handle looking at just yet. Mikey grabs onto Gerard’s jacket and sits up slowly, wincing with every movement. “Wait,” Mikey gasps, when he’s sitting upright on the table.

Gerard stops immediately and just holds on. Despite the weird stiff embrace, Gerard can’t help but bask in the ability to hold his brother after all that time apart. “I love you,” Gerard breathes into Mikey’s ear, and once he begins he can’t stop. “I missed you so much. I’m gonna keep you safe now, I promise. I’m so sorry you had to be here, but I’ve got you now, baby, I’ve got you.”

Mikey takes a slow deep breath and clutches closer – then freezes. Gerard starts to pull away, thinking maybe he’s jostled some kind of injury (it seems like Mikey has more than enough of those) but Mikey holds on tight, bony fingers digging into Gerard’s shoulders. “Oh shit,” Mikey mumbles, “oh _shit_. Gee. Gee, help me up.”

Gerard helps Mikey stand, and then it’s a full-force Mikeyway hug, Mikey’s face buried in Gerard’s hair. And Gerard realizes Mikey is smelling him, deep shuddering inhalations, which is weird.

“Mikey?”

“You smell familiar, I _know_ you, I actually – oh my god. _Gee_ ,” Mikey says in a rush, and then Mikey’s kissing Gerard’s ear, his temple, his cheek, his mouth. And this isn’t something they do, or ever have done, but Gerard doesn’t pull away. He just feels it, Mikey’s dry lips on his own, one long easy moment of Mikey’s happiness. Mikey moves back a step, smiling weakly, and he strokes shaking fingers through Gerard’s hair.

Gerard doesn’t even try to keep the huge grin off his face.

Ray swallows loudly, interrupting. “Uh, Party? I’ve got his clothes?”

“Right, right. Good,” Gerard replies, noticing for the first time that Mikey’s completely naked. Mikey won’t let go of Gerard, but that’s fine with him. Ray helps Mikey step into jeans and boots, and Gerard carefully slips a tshirt over his brother’s head, stretching out the neckhole so it won’t brush against the stitches in Mikey’s scalp, tugging the hem so it falls loosely around Mikey’s underweight frame.

On impulse, Gerard leans in and kisses Mikey’s cheek. “I’ll take care of you, you’ll see.”

“Party we’ve gotta go. Six minutes before guards hit this section of the floor,” Ray – no, Jet Star, he’s Jet – reminds him, and Gerard pulls back from his brother.

He slides his mask back down over his face, and widens his stance - back to Poison for now. “We’re leaving. I might have to kill some people, don’t worry about it, okay?” he tells Mikey.

Mikey just shrugs.

Ghoul comes over, gun pointed at the lady – nurse? doctor? – they nabbed before. He’s got a usb drive dangling from one finger. “Downloaded all the records I could get into. Want me to kill her?” Ghoul asks calmly.

Poison shakes his head. “No point. Korse will know it was us who took him no matter what. Save your battery for guards.” He grips Mikey’s hand tightly. “Stay behind me and try to keep up. Trust me?”

“Why the hell not, right?” Mikey gives him a lopsided smile, and it’s a little bit like old times.

 

~~

 

“Go, go, I’m fine,” Ray insists, doing up his seatbelt. His hair is singed but he doesn’t look like he got hit. Frank puts the Trans Am in gear and floors it.

Gerard holds tight to Mikey in the backseat. A couple of near misses, more than a couple of dead guards, but no real injuries. And they got Mikey. He’ll call it a win.

Mikey curls into Gerard’s side, cuddling close like he wants to burrow inside him, which is fine by Gerard. He never wants to let his brother out of his sight again.

“You did so good, Mikey. I know it hurts,” he soothes, rubbing Mikey’s back carefully. Now that they’re in the car and he doesn’t have his attention split by being shot at, Gerard can hear the wailing of violins through their bond. But Mikey hasn’t made a word of complaint, and Gerard’s chest feels tight with a sad kind of pride at his brother’s ability to withstand the unrelenting pain he’s in.

“Better with you here,” Mikey says, muffled by the fact that his face is pressed into Gerard’s shoulder.

They hit a pothole, and Mikey’s pain pulses louder.

“ _Frank_.” Gerard snaps, petting Mikey’s hair carefully.

“Sorry, but this road is shit, I’m doing my best,” Frank says, and Gerard feels a little bit bad, but his focus is all on his brother.

“S’okay Gee,” Mikey manages, sitting up stiffly, wrapping an arm around his own midsection. His expression is tight and strained and he looks like he’s going to puke. “It’s gonna hurt no matter what. Just distract me.”

“Distract you how?” Gerard asks, taking Mikey’s free hand in his own and squeezing it firmly.

“Just talk. So Fun Ghoul is Frank?”

Frank smiles at Mikey in the rearview mirror. “At your service, Mikes.”

Ray turns in the passenger seat, offering his hand. Mikey shakes it with the hand that was pressed to his belly, instead of letting go of Gerard. “Ray Toro, a.k.a. Jet Star. It’s really good to see you again, man.”

“Really is,” Frank adds sincerely. “We thought you were dead for sure.”

Gerard kicks the back of Frank’s seat, and Frank laughs. “Lighten up, Gerard, we got him back!”

“Gerard,” Mikey says quietly, like he’s tasting the name.

“Oh, right.” Gerard blinks, squeezing Mikey’s hand. “Gerard Arthur Way. And you’re Michael James Way, but no one calls you Michael. Always Mikey. And your code name is the Kobra Kid. Our crew is called the Fabulous Killjoys.”

“Huh.” Mikey says, and at Gerard’s cocked eyebrow, adds, “The Killjoys came up in interrogation. I didn’t know if I was one – I mean I obviously didn’t say so. But that’s cool. You - _we_ \- seemed badass.”

There is a tense pause before Ray clears his throat. “So, um, interrogation-wise. We’re gonna need to know what you told them.”

Gerard glares at Ray. “We don’t have to talk about it now. It can wait until you’re feeling better.”

“But you don’t even remember,” Frank says. “You could have told them you were a unicorn and you wouldn’t know it now, because they messed up your brain.” Ray smacks Frank’s arm, but Frank protests, “It’s not like he doesn’t _know_ he lost his memory. And it’s pointless to grill him on shit he doesn’t remember anyway -"

“I didn’t talk,” Mikey interrupts.

“We wouldn’t be mad if you did,” Gerard tells him softly, “We just have to know – but it doesn’t have to be now. It can wait, okay?”

“If they could get anything out of me, they wouldn’t have fucked me up,” Mikey says. He’s gritting his teeth against the pain but he keeps talking, his tone defensive. “They don’t bother sticking wires into your brain if they can break you the normal way. If I’d talked I’d be dead already. And know I haven’t said anything since I woke up from the last surgery, so you can relax.”

“Okay. I believe you, Mikey. Thank you for protecting us,” Ray says sincerely, reaching back and patting Mikey’s knee.

“What I don’t get is why,” Frank says. “Why did you sacrifice yourself for us when you didn’t know we existed?”

Mikey squirms, uncomfortable, and says, “Stubborn, I guess, and, I don’t know… I just kind of knew I had a family.” He meets Gerard’s eyes, and Gerard smiles at him, leans over to kiss his cheek.

Another pothole jostles them, and Mikey groans this time, pressing his face into Gerard’s shoulder. “ _Motherfucker_. Keep talking, guys, it was working.”

“What should I – oh! We were in a band before the war, all four of us. You played bass, Frankie and Ray played guitar, and I sang,” Gerard announces. “We were called My Chemical Romance.”

Mikey laughs, quick and surprised. “That’s the best fucking band name I’ve ever heard." 

 

~~

 

Gerard isn’t ashamed of the fact that he’s crying a little, watching Mikey sleep. The morning light is thin and unforgiving on Mikey’s face, and it’s easy to see now how painfully skinny he is, the deep shadows under his eyes. He counts Mikey’s eyelashes and thinks about Mikey’s completely irrational and yet adamant aversion to eyelash curlers, about him insisting _, I don’t care if I look weird, those things creep me the fuck out_. And he tries to let it sink in that Mikey won’t remember that, now, or a million other little moments they had together. Dressing room makeup experimentation. Getting systematically hammered in the van to kill the stagefright before shows back in the early days. Reading comics by flashlight in a shoddily-crafted blanket fort when Gerard was twelve and probably too old for that kind of thing, but with Mikey it didn’t ever matter.

Gerard wipes his eyes hastily when Mikey starts to wake up, but it’s too late. Mikey reaches up and swipes the pad of his thumb gently under Gerard’s eye to catch a stray tear. “What’s wrong?” Mikey asks quietly.

“Nothing, just. Missed you, Mikes,” Gerard confesses. It may not be the whole truth, but it is true, he missed Mikey like oxygen.

Mikey’s hand slides into Gerard’s hair and he tugs him gently closer, presses their foreheads together. “Me too,” Mikey whispers. “I sensed you y’know, I knew you’d come for me.”

Gerard shuts his eyes tightly, and he’s a total sap but fuck if he can stop crying. “You used to say I was your lighthouse, fuck, I should have protected you better, I shouldn’t have let you end up in that place. I’m so sorry, I’m _so_ sorry I let you get hurt.”

“It’s not so bad, I’m gonna be fine,” Mikey soothes. “You rescued me, Gee.” Then Mikey kisses him, achingly gentle as if Gerard were something precious, and Gerard doesn’t think, just sinks into it and kisses back. It’s nice, it’s really fucking nice, Mikey’s tight grip in Gerard’s hair, sweet shallow brushes of their lips that resonate deep in Gerard’s mind with a rich, classical soundtrack, bright like fresh snow.

There’s nothing in the world that Gerard would deny Mikey right now if he can possibly give it, so when he senses Mikey wants him to, Gerard kisses his brother more passionately, strokes Mikey’s tongue with his own and lets himself really get into it. Mikey smells like the hospital, clean and disinfected, and Gerard wants to mess him up, get Mikey dirty and familiar again. The urge only strengthens, until Gerard’s kissing Mikey over and over, deep claiming kisses that Mikey takes like he needs them to breathe. Mikey would be grinning if he physically could right now, Gerard knows by the rising guitar solo that starts filling Gerard’s chest, making him feel whole again after months of having this most important piece of himself ripped away.

It’s still not enough. Gerard breaks the kiss to bite at Mikey’s jaw, lick his throat. He wants to jerk off onto Mikey, maybe even piss on him, not to degrade but to _mark this territory_ , take it back and keep it in this base, primal way, and he doesn’t realize he’s saying this shit out loud until Mikey laughs.

“After, okay?” Mikey says, yanking Gerard up for another eager kiss. “Fuckin’ make love to me first, wanna remember my husband.”

Gerard jerks away like he’s been burned. Shit, _shit_. “Husband?” he chokes out.

Mikey frowns. He’s flushed, lips swollen and wet from making out, _jesusfuckingchrist_. “Aren’t we married? You said we have the same last name.”

“No, um. Fuck.” Gerard moves himself off of Mikey very carefully, and tries not to hyperventilate. “Fuck, _Mikey_ , oh my god.”

Mikey sits up gingerly, frowning. “Okay, sorry, we’re not married then. No big deal. Stop freaking out.”

Gerard feels like he’s going to puke. He puts his head between his knees, and he can see that his erection is completely obvious, straining against his jeans, and this cannot get any worse. Fuck. “I’m your _brother_ , Mikey.”

There’s a long moment of quiet, just a soft off-kilter kick-drum invading Gerard’s thoughts. “My metaphorical brother, right? Like an old army buddy, brothers-in-arms kind of deal.”

Gerard shakes his head. He’s in too deep to lie now. “Brothers like we have the same mom and dad. I am literally, biologically your older brother.”

Of all things, what Gerard didn’t expect to hear was, “Alright.”

Gerard looks up, and Mikey shrugs. “Well it’s weird, like, I _really_ thought we were married, but it’s not like we’re kids. We’re consenting adults. So we’re related - my instincts told me to let you piss on me. We’re kinky dudes, I guess. Whatever." 

It’s all Gerard can do to stare blankly at Mikey while he tries to process that statement. “You don’t _care_?”

Mikey shifts closer, placing his hand lightly on Gerard’s back. “You don’t feel like my brother,” he says softly. “We’re in love. You want me, you should take me. Please?”

Gerard has never even thought about sex with Mikey before. Of course he’s noticed that Mikey’s gorgeous, but he figured that was just jealousy, wanting Mikey’s height and slenderness for himself. But right now, Gerard’s not just thinking about it, he fucking _needs_ it, to strip them both down, cover Mikey’s naked body with his own and get inside him, make sure Mikey knows he’s Gerard’s. Keep him safe, make him happy, make Mikey come. But Mikey is injured and vulnerable and has brain damage, he doesn’t even know who he _is_ , and Gerard just can’t. Won’t.

“We’ve never had sex,” Gerard says bluntly. “We’ve never kissed on the mouth before last night. We’re very close, you’re my best friend and I love you so fucking much and I’d die for you in a second, but we are not in love. I was a good big brother,” Gerard promises, and shit, he’s crying again, because Mikey’s face is falling, but, “I never fucking molested you, Mikes,” he promises fiercely, “I never even wanted to. I’d never _ever_ hurt you.”

Mikey shifts to the edge of the mattress and gets up – Gerard reaches for Mikey’s elbow when he struggles a little, but Mikey yanks it away. Gerard lets his hand fall.

“Never hurt me,” Mikey scoffs, when he’s standing. He doesn’t look at Gerard before he walks out.

Mikey’s anger has always sounded like Anthrax. Gerard used to think that was cool.

 

~~

 

He doesn’t know how long he sits in the back room on the bed, but when he comes out into the diner proper, only Ray is around. Ray is sitting in a booth with a new white ray gun, carefully painting it red. He looks up when Gerard takes the other side of the booth.

“For Mikey?” Gerard asks.

Ray nods. “He said red’s his favourite colour.” Some deep knot of tension in Gerard’s brain loosens just a little – at least some things are still the same. “I figured we could give him your old jacket to match. He’ll need new leather if he’s going to get back on his bike.”

“Don’t tell him it was mine,” Gerard says, watching Ray’s paintbrush instead of his face. “I’ll sew on a Kobra Kid patch first. Let him think it was always his.”

“You did the right thing,” Ray offers after a pause. Gerard looks up, cocks an eyebrow. “Yeah, we overheard. Kinda hard not to.”

Gerard snorts. “And you think I did _good_?”

“Well. Eventually.” Ray puts down the paintbrush. His gaze feels heavy on Gerard’s face. “I had brothers.”

Gerard winces. _Had_. God, he’s lucky. Even if Mikey never speaks to him again, Gerard is so fucking lucky.

“But I’ve never had a soulmate. Or whatever your thing is,” Ray continues. “I’m not gonna judge." 

“I never touched him,” Gerard insists. “ _Never_ , not before today, and that was bad, but – I’m not that guy. I didn’t –"

“Hey, I know.” Ray covers Gerard’s hand with his own. Ray’s hands are huge, it makes Gerard feel like a kid, dumb and reckless like he never used to be.

“I just wanted him back so fucking bad, I wanted to hold him - make sure he was really _there_ \- and then he kissed me. And I.” Gerard can’t finish.

“Give yourself a break, it’ll be okay,” Ray says, like he really believes it, and that helps.

 

~~

 

Frank bangs through the back door, an arm slung around Mikey’s shoulders. “Mikes can still shoot, I made him practice,” he announces loudly. “And I _know_ he’s not a natural, ‘cause I still have the fucking scar on my foot. He remembers.”

Gerard stands up so fast he bangs his knee against the table.

“Don’t get excited,” Mikey says, face blank when he looks at Gerard. “A lot of stuff never went away. Like, I can still read and everything. I think skills and stuff are a different kind of memory.”

“It’s still good,” Frank says firmly. “Plus your eyesight is way better now, and you’ve retained your disturbing silent rage, so there’s that.”

Ray looks up from the old radio he’s been tinkering with for the last hour. “Why would they fix his eyes? It doesn’t make sense.”

Mikey shrugs out from under Frank’s arm, and wanders over to the serving counter. He toys with the edge of a magazine lying there, not looking at anyone. “It does, if you consider the, um. The endgame,” Mikey says quietly. “Ghosts don’t wear glasses.”

“Oh. Uh, right.” Ray lowers his eyes back to his work. “Sorry Mikey.”

Gerard’s imagination has always been an enemy as much as an asset. He remembers with gut-wrenching clarity how Persephone had looked at the end, her glassed-over dead eyes and mindless determination, no more alive than the gun in her hand. The idea of Mikey ever being like that, hollow and obedient, is terrifying.

“Mikey, can I talk to you?” Gerard interrupts, going over and grabbing Mikey’s arm before he can protest, dragging him into the diner’s kitchen.

Once they’re alone, Gerard doesn’t know how to start. He wants to put his arms around Mikey and cry, but he doesn’t know if he should, and he hates the uncertainty almost as much as he hates the fact that he can still feel the echo of their kiss from that morning, the way he’d felt so powerful and loved with Mikey underneath him.

In the pregnant pause, Mikey starts without him. “Just listen to me, Gerard,” Mikey says, and takes a deep breath. “You’re not my brother.”

Gerard reels back like Mikey punched him. A blow would have hurt so much less. “ _Mikey_.”

“I know I’m _your_ brother. I believe you when you say you changed my diapers or whatever –"

“I am only three years older than you!” Gerard bursts in. “I didn’t fucking –"

“But _I don’t know that_ ,” Mikey says. “I don’t remember growing up with you, I don’t know –"

“So let me tell you!” Gerard shouts. “Let me fucking tell you and then you _will_ know and we can go back to normal and –"

Mikey grabs Gerard by the shoulders, hard. “Fucking listen!” he yells back, and it startles Gerard into silence. “I have _never met our parents_. Think about that. You could show me a picture of them and they’d be strangers. I don’t know if I went to college, if I liked sports, if I got bullied. As far as I fucking know, my first kiss was yesterday.”

“Do you think it doesn’t hurt that you don’t remember me?” Gerard demands. He hates how broken his voice sounds, but he can’t help it. “Our childhood, our band, our fucking _life_ – And you said you knew me. You _recognized_ me when I hugged you, and. I know you feel me. Don’t you see the colours?” He reaches up, cups Mikey’s cheek in his hand. “You used to tell me about them, the colourful lights.”

Mikey leans into the touch, breathes, “Of course I see them.”

“We love each other,” Gerard insists, desperately. “We’re soulmates.”

“I know.” Mikey shuts his eyes, opens them. They’re wet, sad. “I don’t want to be your brother." 

Gerard yanks out of Mikey’s grip, stumbles and leans heavily against the counter. He shakes his head to clear it. This isn’t happening. “That’s - That’s not fucking _negotiable_ , Mikey. Shit is what it is, and you can’t… we are what we are.”

Mikey sighs, reaches out as if to touch Gerard but pulls his hand back before making contact. Gerard’s distantly grateful for that. If Mikey pushes him, he’s not sure he trusts himself to say no. He digs his fingernails into the countertop until they crack, and doesn’t even feel it. He’s a good brother. He can do what’s necessary, even if Mikey can’t.

 

~~

 

“Ow!” Gerard rubs the back of his head where Ray just smacked him, “What the fuck?”

“Go be nice to your brother,” Ray says with a harsh glare. Then he softens, smiles sheepishly. “That was me impersonating my mom, how’d I do?”

“Surprisingly well,” Gerard admits, slouching down further in the booth. This particular booth is his favourite, where he keeps his scavenged art supplies. He doesn’t appreciate being interrupted when he’s there to think, to process the enormous fucking changes in his life. “Now fuck off.”

Ray crosses his arms over his chest. “Sorry, can’t. I know you guys had a fight, but we just rescued him from being tortured by an evil corporation, and it’s _Mikey_. Go make up.”

Gerard scowls up at Ray. “What’s the other reason?” He can tell by Ray’s face that there is one.

“Frank’s been reading all those medical records and crap he stole from the hospital and he’s all excited, he won’t shut up about the brain. It’s making me queasy,” Ray shudders.

“Fine.” Gerard gets up reluctantly. “ _Mom_.”

 

~~

 

“So the cool part is, they took the electrical imprint of all the synaptic potentials in the medio-temporal cortex and –“

“Give us a minute?” Gerard interrupts, from the doorway.

Frank pauses in his speech, and stops pacing the tiny space in front of the bed where Mikey’s been supposedly resting. “Ray’s so sensitive, it’s just science,” he grumbles. He pats Gerard on the arm on his way out of the room, and mutters, “Be nice, yeah? He’s really freaked out.”

Gerard shuts the door softly behind Frank, and leans back against it. Mikey looks terrible, all bruised and pale and exhausted, curled up with his back pressed tight to the wall. “I’m sorry, okay? I overreacted. The kissing was fucked up, I get that, and I promise it won’t happen again.”

Mikey looks away. “I _want_ you to kiss me again. I guess I’m into ‘fucked up’.”

“You’re confused right now,” Gerard says. He’s sort of flailing his hands around because he’s so uncomfortable, and wishes Mikey would tell him to stop it. Wishes Mikey could remember that it’s his job to tell Gerard to stop it. “There’s no fucking shame in that, I don’t even want to _imagine_ what they did to you in there because it makes me want to go back and burn down that entire motherfucking hospital. But you _are_ my brother, and I’m going to get you through this.”

When Mikey doesn’t respond, Gerard goes over and sits on the edge of the thin mattress, taking Mikey’s hand. “Maybe you have to get used to it, maybe it’ll take a while to feel like yourself again. But I’m here for you no matter what. Trust me?”

Mikey meets Gerard’s eyes and says, “Yeah,” but his expression is wary and his soundtrack is all clarinets.

Woodwinds from Mikey are never a good sign, and for a second Gerard misses the thrash metal of Mikey’s anger. But he can wait this out too, for as long as Mikey needs to get back to himself.

 

~~

 

“Gee?” Gerard looks up, startled out of his daze. He gets the feeling that Ray had been saying his name for a while trying to get his attention. “If you’re not sleeping, do you want to take this watch? I was about to wake Frankie, but…”

Gerard shakes his head. “He’s going to have another nightmare any second.” He’s been watching over Mikey all night, and he’s already been woken up twice by the noise. Nothing out loud, lucky for Frank, but to Gerard Mikey’s internal soundtrack is more direct than any physical sound could be. The disjointed strings, wavering in and out like the voices of people being strangled, precede Mikey’s shaking and tears by at least a minute. If Gerard pays attention this time, maybe he can wake up his brother before it gets too bad.

“Do you know what he’s dreaming about?” Ray asks softly. He crouches down, taking a seat next to Gerard on the floor, leaning back against the wall.

Gerard lists to the side, laying his head on Ray’s shoulder. “No. He could probably tell you, if it was me, but I don’t… it doesn’t quite work the same, on my end. I just know that he’s trapped. Someone’s about to hurt him really, really bad, but he can’t move, or defend himself. There’s nothing he can do but wait.”

Ray sighs heavily. “Fuck.”

“Yeah.” After a moment, Gerard straightens up, immediately missing Ray’s warmth. “You should wake up Frank. I have to stay here.”

“Okay.” Ray pats Gerard’s knee before he stands up. “But try to get at least a little sleep? It won’t help him if you wear yourself out.”

He knows he won’t, but Gerard lies and promises Ray that he’ll try. Mikey’s more important than anything else.

 

~~

 

Frank’s been angrily pounding keys on Mikey’s frankencomputer for over an hour before he starts pounding his head on the table instead. “Can someone fucking help me?” he groans loudly.

“Nope,” Ray shakes his head. “I used to be great with computers. Not that thing. I tried to access a file once and smoke came out of it.” He buries his face in his issue of SHINY and stretches out his long legs, taking up an entire bench seat as if to say, _don’t bother coming over here and begging for help_.

Frank thumps his head against the table again. “This fucking button does something different every time I press it,” he whines.

“Hold down the four and the W and double-click,” Mikey says absently.

Everyone turns to look at Mikey, who continues poking around in Ray’s toolbox as if he hasn’t said anything out of the ordinary.

“Uh, you wanna try this, Mikes?” Frank asks reluctantly. It’s clear he doesn’t think Mikey knows what he’s talking about, but he shuffles over in his seat to make room in front of the laptop.

Mikey takes the offered seat, his fingers fitting themselves to the keyboard as if instinctively. He quickly taps a few keys, and Frank’s mouth drops open.

“ _That’s_ what that does? How did you… that doesn’t make any fucking _sense_ , though!” Frank exclaims. “Hey, can you decrypt these two files? I nabbed them from the hospital, they might have something to do with how they scrambled up your memory.”

“Yeah, hang on,” Mikey keeps typing, and Frank hooks his chin over Mikey’s shoulder and gapes open-mouthed at the screen the whole time.

 

~~

 

Only a few days later, Frank crowds them all into the booth they dedicate to strategy sessions and family meals. Mikey chooses the seat next to Frank, and Gerard tries not to feel jealous.

“I’ve been through all the information, and I examined Mikey the best I could,” Frank begins. 

Mikey rolls his eyes. “He quizzed me about old horror movies and music trivia, and asked a lot of intrusive questions about my sexual experiences.”

“It’s not my fault those are the only things I can be sure you’d remember. What else was I going to quiz you on, world history?” Frank pats Mikey’s hand. “I love you man, but let’s be realistic. Okay, I’m piecing this together from the couple psychology courses I took in college and the info I stole from the hospital computer mainframe, so bear with me. There’s several different types of memory. His memory for skills and shit seems fine – firing a gun, using his fucked up computer - and there’s this thing called priming, where stuff you’ve experienced before just kind of feels familiar to you.”

Mikey nods in agreement. “Like I remember the way certain things smell. Gerard, and the diner, stuff like that.”

“Yeah. So there's also memories of facts with no context, like, who directed the original Dawn of the Dead.” Frank explains.

“Romero. Obviously.” Mikey adds.

Ray chuckles. “Thank god he remembers old movies. What would we do without such valuable inf- hey! Don’t kick me.”

Frank looks unapologetic. “He knows what a drac looks like, who BL/ind are, the locations of safehouses. Did you wanna have to re-teach him all of that?”

“Fair enough,” Ray concedes.

“What’s missing are the kind of memories where you can picture yourself in a particular time or place. So he doesn’t remember high school, but he remembers whatever facts he _learned_ in high school, because facts get stored somewhere else. Does that make sense?” Frank asks.

“No. Why wouldn’t he know his name, and shit? Names are facts.” Ray argues.

Frank shrugs. “Autobiographical information is all shoved in with life experiences in the brain. Don’t ask me why. The idea is, he knows information _about_ Dawn of the Dead, but he can’t remember the _experience_ of watching it.”

Gerard had known it was bad. Mikey had told him as much ( _I’ve never met our parents_ ) but it’s something entirely else hearing Frank say it so plainly. It’s all erased, all of his favourite memories with Mikey, and all the mundane shit, too. Grade school. Their first guitars. 26 years worth of time.

“Your whole life. They took your whole fucking life away.” Gerard speaks without meaning to, staring down at his own hands. He’s not ready to look at Mikey, yet. Can he even be the same person, now? Can you remain yourself if you have to start all over again with no past? “Can we fix it? Is it possible to put back what they took?”

“I… maybe?” Frank says. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“If it were possible,” Ray says slowly, “we would need one of the SCARECROW scientists to do it. Is there any scenario where we could trust them not to make it worse? Even if we went back-”

Mikey stands up abruptly. “I won’t go back. I – you can’t think– you don’t know what they can do.” He’s white, eyes wide and fearful. Gerard feels pinned to his seat.

“There has to be a way around this-" Gerard starts to say.

“They flick a switch and you think you’re on fire,” Mikey cuts him off, voice cracking around the words. “Wires in your brain makes it so fucking easy. It’s nothing like when they really burn you, it just keeps going because the nerves don’t die – you can’t-"

Gerard’s caught in his brother’s panic, frozen, unable to move. Frank beats him to it, scrambling up and wrapping Mikey into his arms, talking over him, “It’s okay, you’re not going back, you’re not ever going back. They can’t hurt you here, it’s okay, it’s okay…”

He watches Frank comfort Mikey and there’s nothing he can do. Nothing is going to make this any better.

 

~~

 

It’s far from the first time Gerard has held Mikey’s hair back while Mikey puked, and it’s far from the first time he’s felt pissed off about doing it.

“I fucking told you,” Gerard sighs, looking away as Mikey wretches again and more vomit splatters the sand. Power Pup looks about the same coming up as it does in the can, but it smells a hell of a lot worse. “I _told you_ you aren’t ready to start riding again. You need to listen to me, I know what you can handle, Mikes.”

Mikey spits and wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “I can’t stay in bed forever. I’m not as weak as you think,” he grumbles, but he doesn’t pull away from Gerard’s arm around his shoulders, from Gerard’s hands petting his hair soothingly.

“You’re getting stronger every day, but you’re still not yourself again. Stay off the bike a little longer. Don’t make me tell Ray he can’t take you out,” Gerard warns.

Mikey wriggles out of Gerard’s arms and shuffles a safe distance from the vomit puddle before flopping onto his side. Gerard crawls over and unceremoniously shoves a hand up Mikey’s t-shirt, but Mikey jerks away. “What the fuck? Don’t.”

Gerard rolls his eyes and pins Mikey down with his free arm, weaseling his hand back under the shirt to rub Mikey’s belly gently. “This always makes you feel better after you puke. Don’t be an asshole when I’m trying to help you.”

“Get the fuck off me Gerard, this is creepy,” Mikey whines, and there’s a strained edge to his voice that makes Gerard pause.

“It is _not_. I’m your brother. We’ve been doing this since you were six!”

But Mikey squeezes his eyes shut and turns his face away. “If you don’t stop touching me, in thirty seconds I’m gonna have a panic attack or a boner or both,” Mikey says through gritted teeth.

Gerard lets go immediately. “Sorry,” he says, and even though he’s confused, he means it. “I didn’t mean to… I thought…”

“I know,” Mikey says, but he doesn’t relax or open his eyes.

“What can I do?” Gerard asks. It’s disorienting, to not know what Mikey wants, what Mikey needs.

“Go inside? Please?”

It’s against everything Gerard’s instincts tell him, but he leaves Mikey alone and goes into the diner.

 

~~

 

He knows he’s starting to sound like a broken record, but he can’t help it. Gerard pulls Mikey by the hand and sits him down in front of the radio. Dr. D is playing _Bullets with Butterfly Wings_. “You love this song, Mikes. Just listen.”

Mikey slumps into the booth obediently and listens, face unreadable. As soon as the song is over, he gets up and turns his back to Gerard. “It was good,” he says quietly, head down.

“That was your favourite song in the world junior year. You listened to it every day,” Gerard reminds him, confused by Mikey’s lack of enthusiasm. “The Smashing Pumpkins are your favourite.”

“Sure,” Mikey says quietly. “Yeah, I liked it.” Mikey slips cautiously between Gerard and the side of the table, escaping to the back room.

Gerard doesn’t know what he’s supposedly done wrong this time. 

 

~~

 

He should be asleep.

But after trading off watch shifts with Frank, Gerard had sat down heavily in one of the booths, just watching the night. They don’t keep all of the windows boarded all of the time or they’d go insane, and it’s nice. Just to sit, and not think about the fact that he doesn’t know if he should go to his own bed, where his brother is, or if he should try to sleep next to Ray. Sit and not think about how Mikey’s been avoiding Gerard’s touch, is barely speaking to him.

He understands that Mikey is fragile and nervous and still getting used to them, but that doesn’t make it less terrible. Gerard has never had this problem before. There’s never been a time he couldn’t curl up next to Mikey and feel like it was the right place for them both to be.

Gerard is watching the dense clouds roll in, layers of dust over fog over dust, when he hears Mikey shuffle out into the diner’s main room. He doesn’t say anything, and he’s surprised when Mikey takes the seat across from him.

“You should sleep,” Gerard says, keeping his eyes on the clouds.

“Tried. Can’t. I didn’t want to wake up Ray,” Mikey mumbles.

Gerard looks at him, and sighs. Mikey’s radiating exhaustion, but his shoulders and jaw are tense. All Gerard wants to do is move to that side of the booth and comfort his own goddamn brother, but he doesn’t. “Ray has sleeping pills stashed somewhere, if you want.”

“No.” Mikey runs his hands restlessly through his hair, scratches at his stitches. They’ll probably need to come out soon, if they’re at the itchy stage. “That’s not even sleep, that chemical shit.”

“ _Mikey_ ,” Gerard starts to say, but Mikey flinches, closing his eyes like he can block out the words. And Gerard hits his fucking limit. “I can’t even say your motherfucking name now? What the hell?” he snaps.

“I don’t wanna do this.” Mikey asks, shoulders curling inward like he wants to hide.

But Gerard is too sad and frustrated to let it go. “You don’t want to be Mikey? Fine. Is Michael better? No one ever called you that except Grandma, and Mom when she was pissed at you.”

Mikey shakes his head. In the moonlight he looks like he’s made entirely of shadows. “It’s not the name, fuck.” Mikey grips the edge of the formica table so hard his fingertips go white. “Do you forget I can see you? When you look me in the eyes, when you call me _Mikey_ , it – it’s horrible. It’s horrible for you. It…”

 _Hurts_ , Gerard finishes in his own head. Of course Mikey would know. Gerard slumps back in his seat, feeling deflated. Defeated. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“Yeah. Me too.”

They’re both silent for a while. Mikey’s voice sounds small and lost when he breaks the trance. “How long has it been? Since,” he waves his fingers in a gesture that Gerard interprets to mean, _since the surgery. Since I woke up different_.

“23 days,” Gerard answers. He’ll never forget the moment of hollow silence that woke him from a nightmare, the brutal cacophony that followed. How he’d held his own pounding head in his hands and sobbed with relief.

Mikey looks down at his own hands as he says, “I’m three weeks old.”

Gerard swallows back the tears that want to come. “We’ll both sleep better if we’re touching, because of the, the connection. I won’t say your name, I won’t look at you, I promise, I’ll just get in bed with you and hold your hand. Okay?”

Mikey’s voice is distant when he says, “I miss me as much as you do.”

“Let me take care of you,” Gerard begs. “Let us both feel better.”

Mikey nods, reaches out to allow Gerard to take his hand. Nothing in Gerard’s world has ever been as tragic as sad slow oboes and his brother’s impenetrable expression.

 

~~

 

Gerard watches anxiously, but Frank’s fingers are careful and steady as he removes the stitches from Mikey’s scalp. Mikey doesn’t make a sound, except to grunt, “Feels weird,” when Gerard asks him if he’s all right. It takes a long time to get all of them. Gerard doesn’t listen in to Mikey’s soundtrack, too busy suppressing his own anger. BL/ind harmed Mikey and it’s not even close to okay.

When the stitches are finally out, Frank grabs excitedly for the hair clippers they all share, tossing them from hand to hand. “Lets get this show on the road, motherfuckers! Any requests, Mikes?”

“I don’t care half as much as you seem to. Do your thing.”

Frank snaps a guard on the clippers and dives right in. He buzzes back over the fist-sized sections that were shaved for Mikey’s surgeries, where the hair is just starting to grow in again, then extends the shorn areas up and back, cleaning up the lines to make it look intentional. Frank mostly leaves the length on top alone, and for a moment Mikey looks startlingly like Gerard. Frank seems to notice that, and buzzes partway up the back of Mikey’s head, too.

“Hey, how do you feel about mohawks?” Frank asks, smirking. “If we could gel this up…”

It hits Gerard harder than he would have thought. Just a fucking haircut, but it feels like a betrayal. Like Mikey is deliberately letting Frank erase all those hours spent in bathrooms, Mikey’s arsenal of hair products lined up neatly on the counter, flat iron at the ready for whatever weird project was in the cards that day. Gerard would sit on the closed toilet seat and watch Mikey’s experiments, and they would talk. Joke around, or chat about comics and music; sometimes serious discussions about plans for the future or whether their mom was going through another one of her rough patches, when she would talk too little and drink too much. The best times they were silent, while Gerard played with his makeup and tried not to choke on hairspray fumes, and occasionally glance at his brother in the mirror, Mikey’s lower lip caught between his teeth while he concentrated.

“Gee? Got any bleach left?” Frank’s voice startles Gerard out of the memory.

“Yeah,” he responds automatically, and goes to grab it.

As soon as Frank starts mixing up the bleach, Mikey _smiles_ , his whole face waking up from its neutrality to turn warm and serene. Gerard feels it like a flutter in his belly, a blooming melody. _Oh._

“It smells like home,” Gerard says without thinking, “Our mom was a hairdresser, and she had this big teased up white hair, and once a month the whole house would reek of peroxide. That must be what you recognized on me, when… um. At the hospital. The smell of my hair dye. It makes you happy.”

Gerard’s heart sinks as the smile slips off Mikey’s face.

But Frank perks up. “Yeah, that’s the priming thing, it’s like echoes of things you’ve experienced before. Your brain is fucking cool, dude, I wish I could go back in time to college and study you.”

Mikey tilts his head obediently while Frank starts painting bleach into the long sections of his hair. “It makes sense. Explains why I felt so safe when I met Gerard,” he says calmly.

Gerard walks away.

 

~~

 

It might be cowardly, but Gerard is glad when they get word that the orphanage in Four is low on supplies. It’s a two-man job, so Gerard takes Ray. Mikey seems to have bonded more with Frank, and Ray knows how to keep his mouth shut about shit people don’t want to discuss.

As usual, it’s Gerard who can’t keep his mouth shut.

“Do you think he’s really that different?” he blurts out, keeping his eyes on the cracked asphalt highway in front of them. Thick ridges of sand have blown across it since anyone last drove this route, requiring his concentration.

As usual, Ray knows exactly what Gerard is talking about.

“Frank told me he wants us to start calling him Kobra all the time, that it might be easier for everybody,” Ray says. Gerard can feel Ray’s steady perceptive gaze on the side of his face.

“I guess…” Gerard trails off. “You think it’s your soul that makes you who you are, but maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s all just fucking… biology. Cells in your brain, electrical signals, all that shit.”

Ray is quiet for a while, tapping his fingers rhythmically on the dashboard, and Gerard thinks the conversation has dropped. But eventually Ray stops tapping and speaks. “I think about The Black Parade sometimes.”

Gerard blinks. “My album idea?”

“Yeah. Look at us, we’re outlaws with rayguns driving a muscle car through the desert, trying to avoid the evil corporation that wants to arrest us for the crime of being ourselves. It’s absurd. This should be a music video we’re filming. At the end of the day we should be going home to our houses and wives and kids and pets, showering off the dust and saying, ‘Damn, what a long day, can’t wait to see the footage when it’s all edited.’ Y’know?” Ray shrugs, gesturing out the window at the constant view of sand and scrubland, dust and empty space. The sun glints sharply off the aluminum carcasses of BL/ind spy drones that other runners have already destroyed.

“What does that have to do with The Black Parade?” Gerard asks.

Ray spits a lock of his own hair out of his mouth. “If this was a music video, it wouldn’t have been for that album. That album was going to be all marching bands from hell and death imagery. I had all these dark, Sabbath-y riffs planned. ‘Outlaws in the desert’ would have been for a later album, one or two after Black Parade, once you got bored of wearing black all the time.”

“Less Freddie Mercury, more Bowie?” Gerard offers.

Ray nods. “Sure. We just skipped ahead.”

Gerard lets the idea sink in for a minute, just driving and listening to the radio. “Do you honestly measure your life by what album you’d make about it?” he asks.

“Would that surprise you?” Ray asks, and when Gerard considers it? It really doesn’t. It seems exactly right for Ray.

“You think what they did to Mikey’s memory skipped him on to the next album, and we’re left behind in the Killjoys one?” Gerard interprets. It’s an interesting idea, although he’s not sure he agrees with it.

“I think Mikey _is_ Kobra Kid now,” Ray says slowly. “He’s living the Killjoys-themed album, because it’s all he knows. From his perspective he just appeared here. But maybe you’re still expecting The Black Parade to come next.”

Gerard must look uncomfortable, because Ray changes the subject and neither of them bring up Mikey again.

The trip takes three days, because they have to make their way through Six and One to gather everything. He and Ray spend a lot of time talking about nothing important – debating over comic books and movies they remember, singing along with the radio. Gerard ignores any music he hears from inside of his head instead of with his ears.

The break is a good thing. It’s easier afterward to draw a line in his brain, to think of Mikey as _Kobra_. Someone new, part of the crew but not yet part of the family. Gerard’s baby brother had long brown hair, glasses, and a quick, easy smile as long as he wasn’t in front of cameras. Kobra is blond with perfect eyesight, has brutal searing nightmares, and doesn’t even like The Smiths.

Kobra is someone Gerard doesn’t know. 

 

~~

 

Ray leads Grace into the back room. “You’re going to stay here with Kobra while the rest of us go work, okay?”

Grace takes one look at Kobra and stops in her tracks, yanking her hand out of Ray’s. “No!” Gerard has never heard her speak so loudly or so emphatically. “No fuckin’ way." 

Kobra looks up from the jumble of electronic parts he’s been fiddling with – who knows what the hell he’s been building – with a small frown.

Grace stares right into Kobra’s face, then spits on the floor. “I know all about you. You were in BL/ind. Nobody comes back from there and is a person anymore. People come back from there wrong, and I know that! You’re nothing but a filthy _ghost_.”

Kobra blinks, then looks down at the tools in his hands without a word.

“Kobra’s not a ghost, Grace. He’s fine, this isn’t the same as what happened to your mom. Party and I went into the city, too, and you know we’re okay,” Ray tries to soothe her, but Grace isn’t buying it.

“I’m not staying with some ghost. Take me home, Jet, I want to go home!” Grace insists.

Ray and Gerard share a look. They can’t take her home, because Dr. D’s is the meeting point for the crews involved in the raid, and most of the ‘runners that will be there aren’t allowed to even know Grace exists.

“How about if just you and me hang out here for the day?” Ray says, with a questioning glance at Gerard. Gerard nods – it’s the only option. He needs Ray, but Frank is the best shooter among them and the Killjoys promised to bring a sniper.

Grace looks up at Ray shrewdly, then at Gerard. “Only you and me, the _ghost_ won’t be here?”

“Kobra isn’t a ghost. But he’ll come with me,” Gerard promises. It’s not like they have a lot of choices, and Kobra has healed up fine, according to Frank’s assessment the other day. Frank and Kobra spend most of their time together, so Gerard trusts Frank to know if Kobra’s healthy enough to do the job. Gerard hasn’t bothered tuning into to the bond to investigate for himself. It only makes him miss Mikey even more, and he doesn’t want to hear a near-stranger in his brain if he doesn’t have to.

“Okay,” Grace nods, taking Ray’s big hand in her own small one once again. She’s always liked Ray the best out of all of them.

“Get your leathers on,” Gerard orders Kobra, and Kobra gets up silently to obey.

 

~~

 

When they get to the meeting, Ghoul greets The Butcher with a nod and a wave. The Killjoys and Youngbloods have been working together for long enough that Ghoul and Butcher have bonded over comparing new tattoos whenever they can. Poison personally prefers to deal with Stereo Nova, who is small and blond and constantly wears a hood like some kind of modern-day grim reaper. He’s also known for being, in turns, endlessly practical and temperamental as hell. Poison likes him, especially because when Nova is around, Decay talks less.

So he’s surprised when Nova stays to the back of the room, adjusting his hood anxiously, while Decay lectures everyone on the layout of the warehouse they’ll be hitting come nightfall. Poison nudges Ghoul with his elbow.

“What’s up with Nova?” he whispers out of the corner of his mouth. He’s glad they’re standing near the edge of the room.

“I forget you didn’t keep up with the local news while K was gone,” Ghoul whispers back. “See the scar? Word is he still can’t talk.”

Poison looks over, and for the first time notices the wide jagged stripe of scar tissue across Nova’s throat. It’s still stark and red, fairly recent. Poison doesn’t have time to wonder what the fuck happened, because Decay is handing out assignments.

“Killjoys, let me introduce my new baby crew, Northern Downpour,” Decay announces. The new crew appears to consist of four delicate-looking brunet boys who must still be in their teens. Poison pays minimal attention to the introductions. These kids will be lucky if they make it six months in the zones before they get killed, or give up and go back to Battery City by choice. The prettiest one is dubbed Dramarama, and Nitro Boy appears to be their leader. There’s also a nondescript boy named Kick Start and one called River Styx who has a severe case of resting bitch-face, as if he thinks he can kill everyone in the room with the power of his mind. “The Killjoys will cover the south loading bay, which is our entrance point. Party Poison has promised to bring me his very best sniper,” Decay continues.

“That would be me,” Ghoul waves sarcastically from Poison’s left. He has an old-school laser-sighted rifle in a gun case on his back, the kind that still use bullets. Bullets are tough to get, so Ghoul has had to learn how to make his own. It’s easier than the alternative, since the only rayguns that can aim reliably from from more than thirty feet out are military grade, not the kind of thing you can just steal off a drac or a regular BL/ind operative. But Ghoul doesn’t bother explaining this, just pats the case affectionately and grins, “She’s a great lady. I call her Annabelle.”

“How nice for you,” Decay replies blandly. “Styx will go with you guys. Ghoul and Poison give cover fire, Styx and Kobra – cool hair by the way – will be backup, and go inside if necessary. The actual smash-and-grab will be in two teams. Team A is myself, Butcher, and Dramarama. Team B is Nova, Kick Start and Nitro Boy. Team A stage left, Team B stage right. Everybody clear?”

Everybody’s clear.

 

~~

 

It goes okay.

At first.

The A and B teams handle the break-in just fine, and Poison, Ghoul and Kobra pick off the dracs that spill out of the entrance without any problems. The kid with them, Styx, seems shell-shocked by all the laser fire and is pretty much useless, but they don’t need him. Ghoul is a fucking wizard with a rifle, and he takes up the slack. All under control. Until they hear a raw, choked-off scream of, “PETE!” and all hell breaks loose.

Poison grabs Styx and slaps him across the face, just once, to break him out of his panic. “Take my position. Shoot anyone wearing white,” he orders firmly, and rushes after Kobra into the building.

He can barely see inside the warehouse, it’s so full of smoke and blast charges. Nova and Decay are cornered by half a dozen dracs in the west corner, and at least two of the brunet kids are nearby, one of them bleeding, the other disarmed. He doesn’t see Kobra anywhere.

Poison shoots a stray drac in the back of the head and takes its gun before it even hits the floor. He hands it to the kid who’s lost his – fucking rookies, don’t they know any better? – and points him in the direction of Nova and Decay. “Go help,” he orders. “Dumbass.” Then Poison kneels down next to the injured boy. He can’t tell which one this is, but he’s bleeding from the scalp and looks way too pale. Poison pulls off his bandana and presses it to the wound. “You alive?” he shouts over the din.

The kid nods. He’s shaking. Poison is going to kill Decay, assuming Decay survives this shitstorm. These kids were nowhere near ready for a job like this one. “Go outside and send in Fun Ghoul. Try not to get killed,” Poison instructs, and scrambles for cover, searching for Kobra’s blond head over the sea of boxes and crates.

When he spots Kobra, alive and taking down a drac with a well-placed elbow to the face, Poison exhales, momentarily dizzy with relief. _Mikey is fine._

That moment, of course, is when Poison gets shot.

 

~~

 

Gerard hisses as Ray applies the antiseptic to his shoulder. The burn isn’t too bad. When the laser blast had melted through his leather, Gerard had been expecting a lot worse.

“Does that – are you okay?” Kobra asks, hovering nearby.

Gerard doesn’t turn to look. “Fine.”

“He’ll be good as new in a couple days,” Ray offers, breaking the strained silence. He tapes a bandage loosely over the wound. “You got lucky.”

“I don’t believe in luck,” Gerard grumbles.

“Looks like it hurts,” Kobra comments quietly. Gerard refuses to be affected by the concern in Kobra’s voice.

“You don’t have to pretend you give a shit,” Gerard snaps, hopping down off the table. “We’re not brothers anymore, remember?”

It’s already past dawn, and that’s normally Frank’s watch shift, but Gerard offers to trade. He’s not ready to get into bed with Kobra and his stupid concerned expression that isn’t enough like Mikey’s to be any comfort.

So of course Kobra follows him up to the roof. Gerard sighs and pushes his hands through his dirty hair. He just needs to be alone for a while, and this won’t help.

“Go to bed. You don’t sleep enough,” Gerard instructs. He has four hours before he trades off to Ray, plenty of time for Kobra to be fast asleep and avoid that awkward moment of arranging themselves in bed so nothing but their hands are touching.

“Shut up,” Kobra says, and comes close. He wraps a hand loosely around Gerard’s wrist, and takes the place next to him, leaning back against the E.

Gerard can’t help the way tension leaks out of him when they touch, the flushing sensation of _I belong here_ that buzzes into him whenever they’re skin-to-skin. He knows what Kobra is doing, being protective, trying to help the pain and stress Gerard is feeling. Gerard wants to be annoyed. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I know,” Kobra says. “You don’t have to do it for me, either.”

Gerard watches the sulfur clouds drifting through the sky over Six. “Thanks for not getting killed,” he says quietly.

Kobra slides his hand down from Gerard’s wrist to press their palms together. He doesn’t say anything, but the music Kobra’s transmitting through their bond is gentle and warm. Gerard shifts a little closer, and they watch the sky together.

Later, when Kobra gets in from a watch shift and crawls into their bed, he curls close and kisses Gerard’s forehead, a barely-there touch. Gerard pretends to be asleep.

 

~~

 

He’s not drawing so much as staring into space with a pencil in his hand when Ray sets an open can of Power Pup in front of him.

“Pony is bringing Grace over this afternoon, and I’m going to go, uh, out. With him,” Ray blushes, taking the seat across from Gerard, digging into his own can of food. “I thought maybe you could spend some time with her? You promised months ago you’d teach her how to paint.”

Gerard frowns at his can, poking at the side of it with the tip of his pencil. He’s not hungry. “I’ve been thinking maybe Grace shouldn’t come over as much. She’s not comfortable with Kobra.”

“She’ll be fine, kids are adaptable. It’s not like Kobra’s about to change back, so she’ll have to get used to him,” Ray says pointedly. “Also if you break your promise to a little girl you’re a shitty human being and I’ll judge you forever.”

Gerard agrees, although he doesn’t want to. Spending time with Grace is a dangerous game. He can’t keep caring about people this much and still get away with it.

 

~~

 

They may live basically on top of one another in the diner, but each of them maintains their own space that is off-limits to everyone else. Back when they’d toured in the van, they learned the hard way that without at least some small boundaries they will go insane and begin to hate each other within days. Gerard has a booth in the main area of the diner which he uses to paint or draw or just be alone for a while. Kobra knows this, and for weeks has been occupying the corner where Mikey used to play around with electronic parts and his beloved old frankencomputer.

So Gerard is surprised to find one of Mikey’s weird inventions sitting on Gerard’s table next to the carefully-hoarded art supplies. The whatever-it-is looks like a particularly shiny retro video game controller, and is labeled _Vend-A-Hack_. He’s about to call out to Kobra for an explanation when he notices the folded note placed next to it.

It’s a series of diagrams, their labels written in Mikey’s familiar spikey printing, next to several drawings of circuits. Some things are crossed out, and notes have been made in tight, precise handwriting that Gerard has no memory of ever seeing before. It must be Kobra’s.

In the bottom left corner of the page is a message in that handwriting:

 

_G,_

_I found this with Mikey’s computer stuff, **[crossout]** he must have been working on it before **[crossout]** everything. I finished it. It should hack whatever BLI vending machine you want, but I haven’t tested it._

_Based on the filenames, he was making it for you, so **[crossout]**_

_Let me know if it needs tweaks. Instructions on the back of the page._

_-K_

 

Today Kobra is out on a job with Frank, so asking about the device will have to wait. Out of curiosity, Gerard flips the page over and notices that among Kobra’s carefully penned instructions is one of Mikey’s doodles in smudged pencil, almost hidden between technical sketches. He recognizes it as one of the little characters Mikey always used to draw in his notebooks, a dragon with a top hat and sneakers. Gerard traces the dragon’s shoelaces with his fingernail, unable to recall what it’s name was.

Gerard sets the paper carefully to the side and gets out his paints for Grace’s first lesson.

 

~~

 

The nice thing about living in Zone Three is that it’s mostly flat, making it easy to see the dust storms coming. Between the four of them, they get the car and bikes into the makeshift garage and the few uncovered windows solidly boarded over before it hits. The howling winds and gritty scrape of sand against the windows used to creep Gerard out and make him feel trapped, but after so long in the zones it’s almost comforting. There will be no SCARECROW patrols until its over, and that means no watch shifts, and no responsibilities.

It doesn’t take very long before Frank gets bored, and enlists Ray to help him retrieve the guitars from their protected place in the steel-reinforced crawlspace under the floor of the backroom. These are the only real possessions that they managed to keep a hold of, and it hasn’t been easy. In the early days, moving around a lot, they risked their own safety more than once to keep them. It was worth it. Ray’s battered acoustic, given to him in high school by his older brother, is more of a keepsake than anything and has seen better days, but Ray’s electric is still intact, and Mikey’s bass is in decent shape. Even Pansy is still more than playable despite what she’s been through.

Ray holds onto the bass awkwardly for a moment, before Frank takes it out of Ray’s hands and passes it to Kobra. “Playing is procedural memory, like driving a car – he can do it just fine,” Frank points out. They’ve gotten far on the back of Frank’s refusal to avoid uncomfortable topics. It relaxes Ray, who smiles sheepishly at Kobra and picks up his own guitar.

Gerard perches on a table while the others get a couple chairs together and tune, plugging into the salvaged and carefully rebuilt practice amps. With the storm outside, they can play as loud as they want to, no one could possibly hear them over the winds.

“Should we pick a song, or just jam for a bit?” Ray asks.

Frank mulls it over a moment, then replies, “Venom. Kobra, just jump in when you want, yeah? I bet you’ll catch on.”

Kobra nods, and Ray counts them in. Kobra keeps his head bowed, eyes closed, fingers poised on the strings, until the chorus, when he starts to play. It’s halting, at first, and the chords aren’t quite right. But it works, and Gerard finds himself smiling while he sings, because that’s his _brother_ , Mikey is still in there. After the final chorus, Gerard calls out, “Helena!” and his band transition smoothly into it.

Gerard doesn’t try to keep his eyes off of Mikey, who still doesn’t look up, just plays. The bass line gets better as they go, Mikey’s fingers moving more smoothly, gaining confidence. There’s no way Mikey won’t remember this song, not when it meant so much to them all. Gerard sings his fucking heart out, belting it out like they’re playing a show, and it feels amazing. His band is with him, pretty tight even without a drum line, and Gerard can’t remember feeling this good since before the Helium Wars, the shows they’d played with Bob. The only sober shows.

When the song ends, Gerard knows he’s grinning at Mikey like a dope, but he doesn’t care. “That was awesome. You were great,” he beams at Mikey, and Mikey gives him a small smile back.

“I like that one, who was it by?” Mikey asks, and immediately the feeling disappears. The illusion. Kobra, it’s only Kobra, and he doesn’t remember their grandmother’s tribute song.

“Uh, it’s one of ours. Those were both My Chemical Romance songs,” Ray offers. “We figured since you’d played them so many times, you’d have muscle memory…”

Gerard can’t listen. He hops off the table and leaves.

There’s nowhere to go with the storm outside, so he ends up in the kitchen. He leans against the old broken fridge, banging his head back against it. He feels stupid and pissed off and embarrassed and he misses Mikey so bad that it burns inside. He should know better. He thought he’d killed the hope, but it’s still there even now, the small flickering idea that Mikey might come back to him one day. He knows intellectually that it’s impossible, but sometimes Kobra will say a familiar phrase, or tilt his head just so, and Gerard can _see_ his brother. He needs Mikey. It was absurd to have fooled himself that he could live without him.

“Gee?”

Of-fucking-course it’s Kobra, hands stuffed into his pockets and blond bangs obscuring his eye. Gerard doesn’t bother wiping his face, even though he can feel the hot tears streaming down his cheeks. There’s no point. There will only be more before he’s through.

“Leave me alone,” he grunts, staring at the wall. Anywhere but at his brother’s face, now inhabited by a stranger.

“You thought it would make me remember. That our band’s music would wake me up like Sleeping Beauty,” Kobra says, not unkindly. 

“Fucking - fuck you, that’s not even true.” Gerard’s voice breaks, and he swallows around the lump in his throat. “I can’t believe you remember _Disney movies_ , but not our grandmother. We wrote that song for her when she died, we fucking cried our faces off for weeks, and you – it’s gone.”

Kobra shuffles closer, leans back against the old grimy stove, mirroring Gerard’s stance. “I don’t actually remember watching the movies. It’s general cultural knowledge.”

The anger surges unexpectedly, a huge and unavoidable thing that just takes him over. “All you fucking have is general knowledge,” Gerard snaps meanly. “You don’t want to be Mikey, you don’t want to be the real fucking person you used to be – you’re empty. You let Mikey die, and now you’re nobody.”

Gerard watches Kobra stiffen out of the corner of his eye. “ _You_ let Mikey die,” Kobra says, low and cold. “You made it very clear that if I couldn’t remember, I wasn’t good enough to be him. Your sad fucking eyes every time I got something wrong. Was I supposed to live like that? Just fake it for you every day? Is that how much you loved your precious brother?”

Punching Kobra in the face isn’t something Gerard planned to do, but he doesn’t regret it afterward. The ache it leaves in his knuckles is intensely satisfying. “Don’t you fucking dare question how much I loved him. Mikey was the most important thing in the world to me from the day he was born and you decided that was worthless if it meant we couldn’t fuck.” Gerard spits out the words, he’s hurting like hell and eager to spread it around. He’s sick of talking around this, of pulling back from the words they won’t say for the sake of peace.

“You think this is about _sex_?” He barely sees Kobra move before Kobra has Gerard pinned to the fridge by his throat. He doesn’t squeeze, but he holds on, tight enough to be a threat, tight enough to force Gerard to look at him. “I thought you were god,” Kobra hisses, fire in his eyes. “I woke up in that place, and everything was bright and everything hurt and they told me I was no one, and how the hell do I know if it’s true? How do you know you have a name if you can’t remember what it is? But there _you_ were, the light behind my eyes telling me I was loved, that I belonged to someone. You promised me that if I stayed strong you’d save me. You made your promises and you fucking _lied_.”

“But I did. I saved you,” Gerard insists. The broken look in Kobra’s eyes, the hitch in his voice, has Gerard pinned down more securely than the hand on his throat.

Kobra shakes his head, looking down as if he’s too emotional to meet Gerard’s eyes anymore. “You promised you loved me and you don’t. I’m too messed up, I’m too different. You said it yourself – I’m nobody to you.”

“No. No, don’t you do this. I love you. I could never stop,” Gerard insists, pushing closer into Kobra’s grip, even when it restricts his air. He grabs onto Kobra’s hips, slides his hands under Kobra’s shirt and up his sides, anger forgotten. He’s frantic and dizzy, heart in his throat. He can’t let Kobra be in this kind of pain, he just _can’t_. “You need sex to prove it to you? Fine. Fine, I’ll make love to you right fucking now, take your pants off. I’ll prove it, I love you.”

Kobra lets Gerard go so abruptly he stumbles. If anything, Kobra looks more enraged than ever. Kobra’s voice is low and accusing when he says, “You only love the shadow of Mikey that’s left behind.”

Gerard blinks, suddenly cold, suddenly weak and lonely and desperately sad. He slides down the fridge and sits on the floor, pulling his knees up. He has nothing to respond with, because he knows what Kobra said is completely true. Kobra is still his soulmate, still the person playing music in Gerard’s heart for the rest of their lives, but he isn’t _Mikey_ , and he never will be again. “You’re right,” he admits quietly. “You’re right. I’ll always miss Mikey. I’ll always love him more than you.”

He expects more rage, more pain, but Kobra just nods, wrapping his arms around himself as if for protection. “If I could bring him back I would – but he’s dead. It’s kinder to both of us if you accept it.”

“I… I’ll try.” Gerard says, and rests his forehead on his knees. He feels wrung out, more exhausted than he’s ever been. It keeps getting more and more real. Mikey’s _dead_. “Can you get Ray for me, please?”

Kobra doesn’t say anything, but he walks away, and in a few moments Ray is there, wrapping strong arms around Gerard. Gerard leans into Ray’s chest and shivers, but doesn’t cry.

He’s got nothing left.

 

~~

 

There’s no space to grieve with the storm still raging outside. By the next morning, Gerard still feels raw and spaced-out but the guys want to jam again. Ray points out that they still owe the Youngbloods two original songs, so they work. The longer they play, the better Kobra gets, until he can keep up easily with Frank and Ray. Gerard does the only thing he can, and focuses on the details, the small things that make Kobra different from Mikey, someone new.

Kobra gravitates toward chords Mikey didn’t care for, and when he messes up, he shrugs it off without a hint of embarrassment. Kobra doesn’t sit with his toes turned inward, and he doesn’t gently mock Gerard’s nonsense lyrics about a medical emergency, just hums along. There’s nothing specifically obnoxious about any of it, and yet Gerard gets a strong sense of pleasure from the bruise he left on Kobra’s jaw.

When they’re putting the guitars away for the day, Kobra asks, “Do you still play shows?”

Ray blinks. “Well, no, we can’t. We don’t go into the city if we can help it.”

“What about the ‘zones? There has to be a bar or a club somewhere, right?” Kobra says.

“I’ve been saying that for months, dude, Gee always says it’s too dangerous because we could be recognized,” Frank replies with a sigh. “But what the hell _isn’t_ dangerous these days? And we could use a different band name, we wouldn’t have to play as My Chem.”

“It’s not that and you know it,” Gerard argues, rolling his eyes. He turns to Kobra to explain, trying not to flinch at seeing Mikey’s eyes when he does so. “BL/ind has a thing about music. It’s outlawed in Battery City completely. They destroy recordings, they raid live shows, they had a whole huge rampage where they killed most of the musicians in LA. They think it’s the key to the revolution, that it will incite everyone to resist and overthrow them."

“They’re probably right,” Ray points out.

“Of course they’re right!” Frank says. “It’s the best way we have of fighting back! Art is the weapon, Gee, you said it yourself.”

“I said that three years ago and we’d dropped a shit-ton of acid that night,” Gerard glares.

“We’re outlaws, isn’t risk-taking kind of the point?” Kobra looks at Gerard with his hands held up in surrender. “I’m honestly just asking.”

“Just think about it, Gee, please?” Frank begs, puppy eyes going full-force.

“I’ll think about it,” Gerard sighs. “No promises.”

Frank hugs him and plants a dramatic smacking kiss on his mouth, making Ray laugh. Kobra’s expression closes off, but he doesn’t say anything.

 

~~

 

Gerard inhales the stink of disinfectant, and knows he must be dreaming. He’s in the ICU, bathed in the sinister blue light he’s come to associate with death and failure. The walls are lined with glass coffins, people inside like dolls trapped behind plastic packaging. Gerard is searching for his brother – Mikey _has_ to be here – but every doll is wrong somehow. They don’t even have faces, just dark eraser-smudges where eyes and mouths should be. Still, he can tell from the heights and shapes and bones that none of these dolls belong to him.

When he reaches the end of the line, he turns, frantic – there must be another room, more dolls to examine – and one of the coffin doors swings open, an indistinct figure stepping out.

First it’s Brian, but when Gerard blinks it changes: a woman in tight clothes with shocking green hair; then a middle-aged man with grey hair and a lab coat with a blowtorch in the pocket; then Korse, sneering and laughing at him; and then Mikey.

The old Mikey with his glasses and birds-nest hair and Journey t-shirt and bright eyes.

Gerard runs for him, but he passes right through, gasping. He turns and Mikey is still there, but shimmering like a hologram, smiling at Gerard sadly.

“Sorry,” Mikey says, and Gerard shakes his head immediately.

He starts to say, _don’t_ , but what come out of his mouth is, “Make no apology, it’s death or victory.” Where did that come from? It’s not what he meant at all.

Mikey’s smile disappears. “So I lost.”

“No!” Gerard insists. “No, I saved you!”

“Did you?” Mikey asks. “Look.” He gestures to the nearest coffin, and Gerard can see their reflections in it. Mikey is turning a deeper blue every minute, fading, and Gerard –

He’s himself, at first, long black hair and white makeup, a black suit with a red tie, but as he looks, it changes. Weight melts off him, and his clothes fade from black into bright bursting colour, his hair turning ragged and red. Suddenly there’s a raygun in his hand, and he drops it immediately. He doesn’t need that, does he?

Gerard turns to Mikey for answers, but Mikey just holds up his empty hands, like, _what do you expect me to do?_

Gerard reaches for Mikey again but his hand passes right through Mikey’s arm. “Honey, if you stay I’ll be forgiven,” he says, desperate.

“Nothing you can say can stop me going home,” Mikey sighs apologetically.

 

Gerard wakes up alone in a bed that smells of the desert, headache-bright sunlight seeping in from the cracks in the boarded-up window. Ray is snoring, hidden from view by the shelving unit privacy fence down the center of the room. He looks at his own hands and barely recognizes them. Absently, he writes with his fingertip in the dirt on the floor.

_Awake and unafraid, asleep or dead._

It takes a long time before he falls asleep again.

 

~~

 

While Kobra engages the security locks on the bike and helmets, Poison adjusts his mask and fluffs up his hair. He can already feel the bass pounding from the wide-open door of the club. The music (if you can even call it that) is so loud Poison half expects the sagging warehouse to crumble from the force of it. It puts Poison on edge. Noise like this, so close to the City border, means BL/ind knows about this place. That can’t be a good sign.

“Put on your sunglasses. You have a bandana with you?” Poison asks, double-checking the battery indicator on his gun one more time.

Kobra puts on the sunglasses, but shakes his head regarding the bandana. Poison sighs and pulls one of his own out of his pocket, reaching up to tie it around Kobra’s lower face. “When you’re in a place like this, you make sure everyone can see your gun and no one can see your eyes. You cover your mouth when you don’t want to speak to anyone. Tonight I do all the talking,” Poison lectures.

He's wary of the warm feeling he gets in his belly at seeing Kobra wearing Party Poison’s trademark colour. Kobra looks good in yellow.

Poison shakes off the feeling and leads the way inside.

The smell of piss hits him like a wave as soon as they walk in, and the crush of bodies inside makes the air humid and almost suffocating. He weaves his way in deep, taking in the atmosphere. The floor is sticky and crunches unevenly underfoot. The people are just as suspect as the building, a mass of writhing black clothes and the occasional flash of bright fabric. Gerard guesses it’s mostly City kids, out for the night to feel the thrill of hollow rebellion, but there are a few ‘runners he knows scattered around. He’s looking for their contact, Cherri Cola.

It takes minutes for Poison to realize Kobra isn’t still following, and longer to find him through the crowd. When he does, Kobra has his back to the outer wall, and is radiating tension from every pore. He’s got his hand hovering next to his thigh holster and he’s pale as all hell.

“What the fuck?” Poison hisses when he’s close enough, leaning in close enough to be heard. He wants to be pissed, but Kobra looks (and, when he remembers to tune into their frequency, sounds) scared shitless.

“I can’t,” Kobra says through gritted teeth.

“Of course you can. You could before, so you can now. C’mon,” Poison pulls at Kobra’s arm, but Kobra won’t budge. Sweat is beading on Kobra’s forehead, more even than is warranted by the stifling heat, and he won’t move his back from the wall. “What,” Poison huffs.

Kobra shakes his head, and mumbles something Poison can’t catch under the swell of shitty computer-generated hip-hop. Someone jostles him from behind and Poison finds himself pressed up against Kobra, knee to chest. He can feel Kobra trembling. “I can’t do everything Mikey could do,” Kobra says directly into Poison’s ear. “Not after…”

It clicks in Poison’s mind, then. Kobra keeps to the edges of a room as often as possible, jumps at sudden noises, can’t sleep without his back to something solid, has scars he refuses to explain.

Kobra is a version of Mikey that spent more than two months as a prisoner of SCARECROW.

“I have your back,” Poison promises without thinking. He’s still a brother, and he’s the leader of their crew, making him doubly responsible for the man in front of him. “I’ll stay behind you. Will that help?”

There’s a suspended moment while they both close their eyes, try to connect. Kobra’s mind sings without words, a clumsy opera Poison can’t parse. He wonders what he’s managing to send, whether he’s comforting Kobra or making things worse.

“Okay,” Kobra says, eventually.

“You sure?” Poison asks, pushing back enough to see Kobra’s face.

Kobra nods, takes a breath, and steps away from the wall.

 

~~

 

He knows he’s going to regret this. Something is going to go wrong, something _always_ goes wrong. “We can play at The Junkyard next week,” Gerard says, and immediately has his arms full of a giggling Frank. “The security is shit – the whole club is shit, but BL/ind never raids there. The owners pay them off, I guess, or maybe they just don’t give a shit. Everyone will expect noise and crowds, it shouldn’t draw extra attention.”

Ray’s grin is huge and blinding. Gerard had forgotten Ray could smile like that. “We’ll need a drummer.”

“I’ll ask DecayDance if we can borrow The Butcher,” Gerard says.

“If not, River Styx is pretty good,” Ray offers. “I was out there fixing up his kit and we jammed a little.”

“Is that the kid with the murder-eyes, or the other one?” Frank asked, his voice muffled by Gerard’s shirt. He’s squeezing Gerard so hard that breathing is going to become an issue if he doesn’t let go soon.

“Murder-eyes,” Kobra replies, and tugs Frank off Gerard by his collar. “You’re like a puppy,” he tells Frank with a laugh, then turns to Gerard. “Did I ever have a puppy?”

Gerard pauses for the now-familiar pang of sorrow and resentment and missing Mikey like a phantom limb. “Uh, you lived with Frank,” he says awkwardly.

“You motherfucker!” Frank shouts good-naturedly, then jumps at Gerard and tries to give him a noogie, and the moment passes.

 

~~

 

He doesn’t know what possessed him to make it, but Gerard has been keeping the necklace in his pocket for days, touching the cool smooth surface, twisting the string around his finger. Sometimes the impulse strikes him, and Gerard just needs to make something. He had been fiddling with the scrap of vinyl he’d kept which had once been a copy of Mikey’s favourite album, and his lighter had simply migrated into his hand. He had melted down the plastic, shaped it as it cooled, until he had this small black rectangular pendant. Gerard had put it into his pocket and refused to think about it until now.

Gerard watches Kobra tuning Mikey’s bass, blond hair falling forward over his face, frowning in concentration. It’s surreal to see. Frank had called it _cognitive dissonance_ , this feeling that Gerard has of seeing two conflicting things at once. The familiar motion of Mikey’s hands over the strings combines with Kobra’s odd too-perfect posture in a way that both confuses and fascinates Gerard. He can’t get a good grip on his own thoughts.

“Five minutes,” Ray says, brushing past Gerard, heading toward Frank in the corner.

He tells himself not to overanalyze. Gerard is who he is, and that means he occasionally makes shit and gives it away to his friends. So he does what he now realizes he intended all along. He goes over to Kobra and touches his arm, waits for Kobra to look up, making sure not to startle him. Then he puts the necklace on Kobra, making sure it settles properly in the dip of Kobra's clavicle before tying the string securely.

“What’s this?” Kobra asks cautiously, reaching up to touch the pendant.

Gerard shrugs. “Nothing. I made it for you.”

Kobra blinks. “Okay, um, thank you.”

Gerard shifts awkwardly from foot to foot. “Are you nervous for the show?”

“Not really. You and Jet and Ghoul are amazing, and you must have done this hundreds of times. How bad can I really fuck it up?” Kobra shrugs. “I’ll just play and see what happens. Don’t worry about me.”

“I don’t,” Gerard says, then shakes his head because that isn’t what he meant. He thinks about Kobra, maybe more than he should, and he’s concerned about him. But Gerard doesn’t worry in the protective mother-hen way he used to worry over Mikey. “I just mean – you don’t need it. It would be weird.”

Gerard isn’t sure why that makes Kobra smile, but it feels good to see it, so he doesn’t comment.

 

~~

 

Stepping out onto the small makeshift stage feels like standing on the edge of a cliff in the best way possible. For the first song and a half, the character of Missile Kid hangs too heavy on Gerard’s shoulders, but as soon as he settles in, it’s just easy. It’s been way, way too fucking long since he’s had Ray shredding to his left and Frank going crazy to his right, so in sync with each other that it would be disturbing if it wasn’t so awesome. The Butcher is excellent, even if he’s mostly making shit up as he goes along, and Kobra…

Gerard tries not to think about him, because it feels wrong being on stage without Mikey. Even though he knows how thoroughly Mikey would approve of what he’s doing, it feels like he’s betraying his brother.

But as he’s singing, he realizes that it definitely wasn’t Mikey he was thinking of when he wrote,

_The way your eyes look into me,_

_Lubrication, can you turn off all the lights so I can’t see?_

It doesn’t matter that the acoustics are absolute bullshit, and that the crowd doesn’t seem to know what to make of them. Assuming they survive the aftermath, The Mad Gear will be playing again.

 

~~

 

Dr. D’s is a maze of hallways and tiny out-of-the-way spaces, but over time Gerard’s learned his way around. He leads the way, trusting Kobra to follow him, until they reach a particular door.

He thinks this room might have been a recording booth, once upon a time, but now it’s a storage space, barely more than a closet. It’s a tight fit, but Kobra shuts the door behind himself anyway. There’s barely a foot of space between them, and the air feels thick.

Kobra places his hand lightly on Gerard’s hip. “Where are we?” he says quietly, as if to fit with the silence of the room.

In that moment, Gerard wants to move closer, to pull Kobra’s arms around himself and lean back against Kobra’s thin chest. He wants to know what that would feel like, but he’s afraid of the consequences. It’s too soon, the boundaries (between Kobra and Mikey, between Kobra and Gerard) are too blurry. Instead, he opens the cupboard in front of them, revealing the aging stereo inside it. On the shelf nearby he’s stowed a particular CD, just for today. He holds it up for Kobra to see.

“This is our album. The second one, but the first where we knew what the fuck we were doing.” He traces his fingertip over the familiar artwork on the cover. “I drew this,” he says, and turns it over to show the picture on the back. “See? This is us, before the war. Before everything changed.”

“Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge,” Kobra reads in a low tone. Gerard can sense that Kobra is looking at him, and not at the picture.

“I want you to hear it. I know we’ve jammed some of the songs, but I want you to hear the whole thing,” Gerard says, turning in the small space.

Kobra takes a step back, putting a little room between them. “I thought you were done trying to spark my memory,” he says, eyes downcast.

“I am! I promise,” Gerard insists. He didn’t think about how this could be misinterpreted, and it wasn’t his intention to hurt Kobra, or send their relationship backwards. “I know you won’t remember. I want you to hear it anyway. I…” Gerard swallows, and reaches up to touch Kobra’s chin, tilting his face up until their eyes meet. It’s intense, but Gerard doesn’t look away from Kobra’s searching gaze, even though his instincts tell him to.

“I miss my brother. I always will. It’s – it’s like the world hadn’t ended as long as I still had Mikey, y’know? And now he’s gone, and you’re here, and everything is different. You didn’t know this version of me. I was a loser and an addict and a fuckup back then. I was barely sober for two months before the war started.” He admits it all in a rush, and Kobra doesn’t react at all, his gaze unflinching. Gerard takes a breath and continues, “This,” he gestures with the CD case, “was the biggest accomplishment of my life. I know I could have done better, we all could have – who knows what the next album would have been, or the one after that? – but this was all we got time for. And it’s _good_. I’m fucking proud of it. I want my soulmate to have heard it. Okay?”

Kobra’s hand skims Gerard’s shoulder, a barely-there touch. “I’d love to.”

Pulling back is the last thing Gerard wants to do, but he manages it. He turns and puts the CD into the player, handing Kobra the attached pair of headphones. They shuffle around each other in the tiny room, until Gerard gets the door open and steps out into the hallway. Kobra sits on the floor, folding his long legs under him, puts on the headphones and closes his eyes before pressing play. Gerard wants to reach out and touch Kobra, nothing big, just his shoulder or his hair, something, but he doesn’t want to complicate things any more than they already are. He pulls the door shut softly.

Dr. Death Defying is poised ten feet away, arms crossed, looking grim. “We need to talk. You should have told me who you are.”

Decay is standing behind Dr. D, and he looks guilty.

_Well, fuck._

 

~~

 

It feels like hours before Gerard shuffles unsteadily out of the back office on legs he can barely feel. It all spins wildly through his head, an entire world he hadn’t spared a thought for amid the rush and pain and noise of zonerunning. Gerard had seen through the bravado of the BL/ind propaganda, and suspected they were lying about their range of influence beyond California. He hadn’t expected the rest.

The number one charting single in Japan was The Ghost of You. Decay had showed him the music video – actors who looked remarkably like the band, playing World War Two soldiers dying in battle. The black screen at the end, subtitles proclaiming, _No Man Left Behind – Save the USA!_

In the UK, they were singing Skylines and Turnstiles at anti-war protests. My Chemical Romance was more famous than ever, and the entire world assumed they were all dead in the wreckage of New Jersey.

Decay’s words loop through Gerard’s mind, _If we put out new music, if we toured, we could show them we weren’t defeated, we could tell the world what BL/ind is really doing. We could give Americans something to fight for._

Gerard stumbles over nothing, and Kobra catches him. “Are you okay?” Kobra asks quietly, eyes searching.

“I have no fucking idea,” Gerard says, resting his head on Kobra’s shoulder. Kobra is bony but solid, and he takes Gerard’s weight, arms wrapping around Gerard firmly, holding him close.

“Can I help?”

Gerard takes the keys to the Trans Am out of his own pocket and slips them into Kobra’s. What he’s learned is too surreal, and he needs a break. It feels okay to let Kobra take over for a while. “Take us home?”

“Of course,” Kobra says. For a long minute they don’t move. Kobra rests his cheek on Gerard’s hair, and keeps supporting him until Gerard feels steady enough to stand.

 

~~

 

Grace sticks out her tongue a little while she concentrates on filling in the lettering on the new motorcycle helmet. She’s turning into a perfectionist, and Gerard couldn’t be prouder.

Gerard doesn’t even notice Kobra standing behind them, watching, until Grace retracts her tongue long enough to say, “Do you like it?”

“It’s awesome. I like the yellow.” Kobra replies calmly. He’s been cautious about Grace, only speaking when spoken to when she’s around.

“I thought it should be red, yellow is Poison’s colour,” Grace says with a frown.

Kobra’s lips twitch into an almost-smile. “Well I like Poison, too. As long as he doesn’t mind sharing it with me.”

“I don’t,” Gerard tilts his head forward, letting his hair obscure his face. He’s embarrassed by how much he’s smiling. “And for the record, I still don’t believe in luck.”

Grace stops painting to glare at Gerard. “ _I_ believe in luck! The luck is from me.”

Kobra blinks, and reaches out to ruffle Grace’s hair. She makes a face like, _I’m too old for this shit_ , but she allows it, and that makes Kobra beam down at her. “Thanks, motorbaby. I appreciate it.”

“I still like you least,” she grumbles, and Kobra laughs.

 

~~

 

It’s strangely Victorian between them, now, rare brief touches, all fingertips and unsteady breath. Gerard’s palm brushing across Kobra’s lower back when they pass in the diner, stroking that strip of bared skin where Kobra’s shirt rides up. Kobra warm and close at Gerard’s back in a shootout, spare battery pack at the ready for him as soon as Gerard’s charge runs low.

And at night, they lie on their backs, the only point of contact their tightly clasped hands. Kobra’s grip is strong, and Gerard sinks deep into their connection, letting his mind sift down through layers of music until he finds the steady drumline that matches his own heartbeat.

 

~~

 

Gerard is buzzing, half-hard and electrified. His band is so fucking _on_ , and the crowd is singing along, people are dancing, and he doesn’t remember ever feeling this good even when he was using. He grins over at Ray, but Ray’s in his zone, playing and headbanging and not paying any attention. Gerard looks over his shoulder for Kobra instead, and even though Kobra’s hair hangs over his eyes, Gerard can feel the weight of his stare, heavy and hot.

It’s pure instinct he’s running on, now – he belts out, “Kiss me you animal!” and Kobra fucking _smirks_ at him, the asshole – Gerard stalks over, grips Kobra by the hair, and kisses him full on the mouth.

Kobra keeps on playing, but he kisses back sloppy and wet until Gerard rips away with a grin.

He can’t fucking believe he just did that. He makes sure he shimmies his hips a little while he stalks back to the front of the stage to keep singing – he just _knows_ Kobra’s watching his ass.

 

~~

 

They’re barely offstage when Kobra takes Gerard by the shoulders, shoves him back against a wall and licks a stripe up the side of his neck. “When you’re ready,” Kobra growls into his ear, pausing to bite at his earlobe, “I’m gonna make you feel so good.”

Gerard slips his hands into the back pockets of Kobra’s jeans, dragging him closer. “Yeah?” he breathes, trying to catch Kobra’s mouth with his own.

But Kobra pulls away, eyes dark. “It can wait.”

“I’ve _been_ waiting,” Gerard groans, exasperated. He wants to put Kobra on his knees, he wants to fuck Kobra’s pretty pink mouth. So much potential, Gerard wants to try everything, right away.

Kobra smiles, a big one that starts at one corner of his lips and spreads until it lights up his whole face, and immediately Gerard’s stomach roils. The sweat dripping down his back goes cold, and he has to fight not to let it show on his face.

That grin is _exactly_ like Mikey’s.

Gerard quickly kisses Kobra, trying to give himself some time to hide, but Kobra steps back with a disappointed glare. “Don’t - not if you’re gonna be twinkling orange at me like that. Shit. If you don’t want me, fucking say so.”

“You can’t expect me to control the...” Gerard wiggles his fingers in a way he hopes indicates twinkling. “You know how I feel about you.”

Kobra arches an eyebrow. “I know you feel confused, guilty, and afraid,” he says shortly. “You can kiss me once you figure your shit out.”

 

~~

 

Gerard slips away from his crew and out the back door of the club. He leans against the brick exterior, feeling the rough surface catch and pull at strands of his hair, mind racing.

“Jet said you have it.” The voice spills out of the shadows, sandpaper-rough and hesitant.

He pulls the usb drive out of his pocket and holds it up as evidence. “I have a question for you first,” Gerard says, turning the drive in his fingers.

A frustrated sigh, and Nova consents to step close enough for Gerard to see his cloaked outline in the darkness. “Which is?”

“Why bother with this? You can write for yourself. You were good. Maybe better than me and my guys, depending who you ask. You shouldn’t need our songs.” Gerard keeps the hand holding the drive close to his chest, making it clear that Nova will have to answer if he wants to get what he’s come for.

“I have never liked you,” Nova says flatly, and Gerard smiles.

“That’s too bad. I thought we could be best friends,” he drawls sarcastically. He has his gun, but he doesn’t bother reaching for it. He doesn’t think Nova’s really going to start anything.

Nova spits onto the sand. “I don’t sing anymore. We made a deal, Poison, and putting up with your bullshit wasn’t part of it.”

Gerard’s smile widens, even though he knows that’s asking for a punch in the face. “You don’t sing meaning you _won’t_ , or you can’t?”

“It’s complicated, and it’s none of your fucking business.” Nova’s hand is on his weapon, now, but Gerard isn’t afraid.

“ _Complicated_ ,” Gerard stretches the word out, making it full and long. “I still have a semi from being licked by my soulmate who might or might not still qualify as my kind-of-dead, half-ghosted brother, and I’m out here wondering whether that counts as incest. And if it _is_ incest, is that disgusting, or does the taboo kind of make it hotter? Am I kidding myself, did I have a repressed sexual attraction to my brother _before_ he turned into a different person, or is this all new? Really it’s an academic distinction, since I’m gonna let him fuck me anyway ‘cause I want it so bad, you have _no idea_. But if I start crying about my dead brother with his dick in my ass it’s going to kill the mood.”

Silence. Gerard glares at Nova. “ _That_ is complicated. If you can sing, sing. If you can’t, get over it.” He holds out the drive for Nova.

Nova takes it and slips it into a pocket deep inside his cloak. “You are _fucked up_ , Poison.”

For a minute Gerard feels like Nova is staring into his soul, evaluating and judging every molecule of Gerard’s life and choices. He’s relieved when Nova blinks, and turns away. But before he goes, Nova narrows his eyes and says, “Love is always complicated. Blow him. If you cry, pretend it’s a gag reflex.”

Maybe he should ask Nova if they can be best friends after all.

 

~~

 

It’s been so long since he’s had a cigarette that for a second, Gerard almost forgets how to light it. This is Frank’s personal black-market stash and he doesn’t share it very often. Not that Gerard ever asks for one, the same way Frank never asks for a sip when Gerard manages to get his hands on real coffee. The zones changed the rules between them, although the same never applied to Ray, or to Mikey (and now Kobra), who are shared with indiscriminately.

Gerard inhales, coughs at the unfamiliar taste and bite of smoke. “Is there pot in this?”

“A little,” Frank nods, then inhales and holds it, attempts to blow a smoke ring. It comes out wonky, nothing but a blob. “Don’t smoke it if you don’t want it.”

There’s no stars visible in the zones, too much sulfur and ash and smog muffling the light, blacking out whatever nature still survives. Gerard watches that for a while, thinking. Eventually he shrugs and takes another drag. Weed was never one of his _things_ , the way that booze and Xanax and coke were _things_ to him, but still the risk he’s taking makes his toes tingle and curl inside his boots. “This would have been dangerous for me. Before the war.”

“Things change,” Frank says, his next smoke ring coming out clearer, more distinct. “You’ve changed. Too many responsibilities now, not enough down time and depression.”

Gerard is pretty sure that’s not how it works, but he doesn’t say so. He just smokes, and tries to remember the stars he would’ve seen back in Jersey. He can’t.

“I’m sorry, Gerard,” Frank states abruptly. He doesn’t look at Gerard and Gerard doesn’t look either, but they both tense up. “I hated you, for long time. After Brian and Bob left.”

This memory is clear, maybe clearer than any other Gerard has that isn’t about Mikey. Brian’s fierce quick hug goodbye, and Bob’s warm one, before the two of them took the tour bus north and Gerard led his family south instead. He doesn’t regret it, even now, but it hurts to think of. And it explains a lot about him and Frank and the line that was drawn after that, Gerard and Mikey and Ray on one side, Frank on the other, quieter than before. “Okay,” Gerard says, because what else is there?

“When Mikey got captured, I thought – you know those thoughts where you don’t even mean them, they just happen all by themselves inside your head? – I thought maybe you were being punished. God or karma or whatever, getting you back. I don’t believe it! I’m just… sorry I thought it.” Frank says, and Gerard can feel Frank’s eyes on him, now, searching.

“I knew you would have gone to Chicago,” Gerard says.

“If I thought you and Mikey and Ray would have come with me, yeah. If I’d been in charge, I would have led us all to Chicago, and we’d probably all be dead, but I still think that was the right thing to do. Bob and Brian were part of us. I still can’t believe we let them ride off to that hellhole _alone_ when we could have helped. It's not logical and maybe it doesn’t make sense, but it's how I feel. At least we could’ve _tried_ , we...” Frank trails off, and exhales a steady line of smoke, no ring this time. “My point is, you’ve changed.”

Gerard snorts humorlessly. “I put my family ahead of my friends. I would make the same choice today.”

“But today it would be because you think it’s morally right, not just to protect Mikey,” Frank gestures with his cigarette for emphasis. “Know how I know?”

“Tell me.”

“You didn’t turn the car around. When Mikey got nabbed, you could’ve gone back and fought for him, and you kept driving because of Grace.” Gerard looks at Frank, stunned, and there’s a shadow of a smile playing around Frank’s eyes. “You chose a kid over Mikey, not even your own kid. And you didn’t bring Ray and me into Battery City to rescue him until we had solid information to go on. You think Gee of MCR would have done that? Nah. You’re Party Poison now. Which is why I forgive you.”

Gerard smokes, and thinks about how when he saw the photo of My Chemical Romance on the back of the Three Cheers CD case, he barely recognized himself. He watches the ash clouds drift across the dark sky, and smiles.

 

~~

 

Ray and Kobra have been sitting on the floor for hours, bent over a mess of electronic parts and wires and tools and scraps of paper with scribbled sketches that they keep passing back and forth, muttering to each other. Two pairs of long legs are splayed out into an awkward fence around their workspace, perhaps unintentionally, perhaps to keep Gerard from accidentally stepping on seemingly-innocuous-but-apparently-very-important shit again. Gerard hasn’t bothered to even ask what they’re trying to build. It’s always something different and he never understands until it’s finished. The zonerunner life has made him practical, he lets the others do their stuff and saves his focus for what he can personally contribute to help them survive. Weapons and art and information. Not that there’s much of a distinction between those categories anymore.

If it weren’t for the desert and the constant threat of death and all their enemies and the lack of coffee, Gerard might have really liked the zones.

It helps that he has Kobra to listen to, his own personal radio station on tap in his brain. Kobra can’t remember all the music Mikey had, but he makes his own much more often. Today it’s upbeat piano-backed acoustic rock, which means he’s depressed and feeling philosophical. Gerard didn’t think it was possible for anyone to be more internally random than Mikey was, but the evidence says otherwise.

Gerard’s attention is caught on the curve of Kobra’s bent neck and the fall of his filthy blond hair, when Kobra startles and yanks his hand up quickly, shaking it out at the wrist, cursing.

“Okay?” Ray asks, before Gerard gets a chance to.

“S’nothing, shocked myself. Tighten that screw there?”

The other lesson the zones have taught Gerard is to follow his instincts. He kneels next to Kobra and takes the injured hand in both of his own, examining it. Kobra’s clearly fine, his index and middle fingertips are barely singed. Gerard kisses them anyway. Kobra tilts his head to the side quizzically, his curiosity shifting sharply into desire when Gerard draws Kobra’s fingers into his mouth and sucks on them, tasting salt and burnt plastic.

Kobra shivers. He pets Gerard’s tongue with his fingers, the movement cautious and almost shy. And that’s all it takes, Gerard’s all in, pushing his end of their soulbond wide open. All the rules he used to depend on have changed, and Gerard needs to know what this is, what it might be. He finally understands that laying himself bare is the only way he’s going to find out.

The moment of stillness that follows is terrifying, before Kobra’s eyelids flutter shut and the last, lingering boundaries between them give way. Kobra pulls his fingers out of Gerard’s mouth and reaches for him blindly, his saliva-wet fingers tracing the curve of Gerard’s cheek as he kisses him, hungry and hot.

Inside their bond, a harmonica whistles.

Gerard giggles breathlessly against Kobra’s mouth.

“Oh fuck off,” Kobra mutters, and yanks Gerard closer by the fabric of his shirt, kisses him hard and deep until Gerard stops laughing. “We doing this?”

“We’re in love, and I want you, so I should take you - isn’t that what you said?” Gerard asks, deliberately coy. “Do you want to say _please_ , again? ‘Cause that was hot.”

Kobra blushes, and Gerard reaches out to touch his flushed cheek. He didn’t expect this, and it captivates him, leaves him wondering what else this body can do that Gerard’s been missing out on.

He stands and helps Kobra to his feet, leading Kobra to their bed with a brief stop on the way to raid Frank’s ‘secret’ lube stash. It takes time to actually undress, checking the safety locks on their guns, unfastening holsters and heavy boots, shimmying out of their sweat-stiff clothes. Gerard thought he’d feel unsure, nervous, but he’s not. He steals glances at Kobra while they strip and thinks about rushing this part - it’s reckless to get totally naked when theoretically the diner could be raided anytime - but Ray is around somewhere, and they need this.

Kobra goes with it easily when Gerard pushes him back onto the mattress and climbs on top of him, presses a kiss to the soft place underneath Kobra’s jaw and inhales the scent of him that’s like metal and matchbooks. He trails his palms over Kobra’s bared skin, feeling out the raised lines of scars that interrupt the smoothness. He wants to lick every single one, taste all of Kobra’s pain and strength.

“This isn’t too weird for you?” Kobra asks, ragged nails scratching roughly down Gerard’s back, making him gasp and rock his hips downward so their half-hard dicks slide together gently, dry, like a _hello_.

“What, ‘cause you used to be my brother?” Gerard gives an exaggerated scoff. “Why would that make it weird?”

Kobra rolls his eyes and kisses him in response. They make out slow and sloppy with Kobra’s playful, grooving bassline as background. It’s thrillingly self-indulgent to take their time this way, exploring each other.

Mikey used to come home from dates with hickeys and bruises, rope-burns on his wrists, and Gerard himself is no stranger to spanking and wax play, but he knows instinctively that Kobra doesn’t like it that way. Whatever accident of genetics or brain chemistry that gave the Way boys a pain kink, Kobra has been re-wired. So when the kiss breaks, Gerard keeps his mouth soft and wet as he works his way down Kobra’s throat and along his collarbone, and doesn’t bite down. Kobra clutches at Gerard’s shoulders just the right side of too hard, his fast breaths loud in the quiet room. 

Tracing the line of a scar on Kobra’s chest with the tip of his tongue feels more intimate than any full-on sex Gerard’s ever had. He’s already hard, just from this. He crawls backward, skips down Kobra’s body to lick a stripe up the underside of Kobra’s cock, too eager to wait. “Gee, fuck, _please_ ,” Kobra groans, fingers twisting sharply in Gerard’s hair. 

Gerard moans his approval, licks his lips to wet them and sucks Kobra down. Right away it’s almost too much, the smooth weight of Kobra’s cock on his tongue, the whine in Kobra’s voice as he tells Gerard he’s beautiful, that he shines so bright, feels so good.

Gerard shifts, grinds his own dick into Kobra’s thigh just to take the edge off, but after a moment he pauses. It feels odd, wrong, and Kobra’s music pulses reedy and anxious. Gerard pulls off to look.

“Oh.” Thick-textured burn scars cover Kobra’s thighs, startlingly white-pink. Gerard swallows hard, so angry it chokes him. Kobra may not be his brother, but he belongs to Gerard just the same, and the injustice boils in Gerard’s gut. He also feels guilty for letting Kobra hide this. He hadn’t wanted to know these kinds of details at first, so caught up in his own confusion, grieving for Mikey and straining to resist the bond.

“Don’t get weird,” Kobra says quickly, voice carefully neutral. “It’s nothing.” 

“Does it hurt?” Gerard asks. He knows he shouldn’t stare, but he does it anyway, presses his palm lightly to the damaged, uneven skin.

“Doesn’t feel like anything.” Kobra turns his face toward the wall, tension in the lines of his body betraying how uncomfortable he really is.

Gerard sighs and moves up the bed. He traces his thumb along the sharp angle of Kobra’s cheekbone, then back, rubbing at the scars above his ear and the soft short hairs that hide them. “Sorry.”

Kobra turns into the touch and drags Gerard into a rough biting kiss. “No more talking,” he says, fumbling for the lube. Gerard presses close and hisses when Kobra’s cool slick fingers circle his hole.

He thought it would be a mindfuck, that he’d either be thinking about Mikey or vehemently _not_ thinking about Mikey. He shouldn’t have worried. They fall in sync easily. Kobra fingers Gerard carefully, stretches him out so slow while they grind together. Gerard smirks to himself when he realizes they’re moving in time with Kobra’s driving hard-rock backbeat. Kobra knows when Gerard is ready without being told, grips Gerard’s hips and guides him back, helps Gerard work himself slowly down onto his cock. 

“Oh fuck yeah,” Gerard moans. It’s been years since he’s been fucked, and he’s never been fucked like this. No fumbling, no worrying about how he looks or if he’s doing it right or what might happen tomorrow. Just a hot hard cock filling him up and strong shoulders to brace against as he grinds down, secure in the knowledge that he’s with someone he can love. Someone he can trust. Kobra digs his nails sharply into the soft flesh at Gerard’s waist, rocks up into him, expression open and shocked and a little lost.

“Kobra,” Gerard whimpers, desperate. “Oh shit, I forgot you’re a virgin. Is this - do you like this?”

“What, are you stupid?” Kobra pants, “Fuck, fuck, _Gerard_.”

“No,” Gerard says, realizing suddenly how wrong that sounds. His old name feels historical, so far into the past as to be absurd. That’s not who he is, not who he wants to be anymore. Not with his soulmate fucking him, and maybe not ever again. “Don’t call me that, please? It’s not…” He trails off, not sure how to explain when he’s so overwhelmed, so fucking close already.

Kobra understands him anyway. “Yeah, Poison, anything,” Kobra agrees without hesitation, thrusting up into him harder, quickly finding the right angle, the right rhythm. The music and the emotion flush through Poison and build until he’s aching with it. He pulls one of Kobra’s hands off his waist and spits into it, wraps it around his cock until Kobra gets the idea and strokes him firmly.

They fuck hard and fast until the muscles in Poison’s thighs are burning with the strain, until he makes Kobra come in an explosion of power chords and joy. “Shit, baby, I need -”

“I know,” Kobra murmurs, helping Poison pull off, lie back on the bed. Kobra licks and bites at Poison’s neck while he jerks him off. Poison’s last coherent thought before his orgasm crashes over him is that he hopes Kobra's leaving a hickey. He likes his milestones to come with souvenirs.

Afterward, Poison nudges Kobra onto his side and spoons up behind him, holding him close until they both stop trembling, breathing evening out. “Is this okay? Can you sleep like this?” he murmurs.

Kobra makes an affirmative-sounding noise and snuggles back into Poison’s embrace. It’s new, being the big spoon, and it feels good. Although he knows it should be a quiet moment, Poison starts chuckling in spite of himself, trying to muffle the sound into Kobra’s sweaty neck. “Are you gonna laugh every time?” Kobra sighs.

“Sorry, sorry,” Poison says. “It’s just - I think your orgasm plagiarized AC/DC.”

“Fair use, motherfucker,” Kobra grumbles. Poison smiles and holds him tighter, content for now just to listen to the strange symphony of the man in his arms.

 

~~

 

Autumn is coming, and with it, enough cloud cover that they can sit outside without risking sunburn. It’s nice to be in the open air without the oppressive humidity of midsummer. Kobra spreads a blanket onto the sand, and sits, stretching his long legs out in a lazy sprawl. Poison doesn’t hesitate to lie down on his back and rest his head in Kobra’s lap.

Kobra doesn’t smile, but he threads his fingers through Poison’s hair automatically, and that’s just as good.

Poison tunes into Kobra’s frequency, finds a deep blues-y hum of saxophones. It’s lovely, sexy and sated at the same time. He scratches at Kobra’s hip affectionately.

“How do you get the mixture of colours so exact?” Kobra asks, after a pause, tugging gently on Poison’s freshly-dyed hair, as if Poison didn’t already know what he was referring to.

“Trial and error. Mikey helped the first few times,” Poison replies. The separation in his mind is smooth, now, the line between Gerard’s brother Mikey, lost but maybe not too far away, and Kobra, Party Poison’s lover and ally. “It’s weird, isn’t it? I was an artist. The colours would have meant so much more to me, and you would have understood the music so much better. Why do our souls communicate in different languages like that?”

Kobra looks down at Poison, and he does smile, now, just a small private thing. Just for them. “I thought it was obvious.”

Poison shakes his head. “Not to me.”

“I love you,” Kobra says, and it still lights Poison up inside to hear it said calmly, factually, “so I see you as you are. I don’t need a translation.”

Poison pushes up on one elbow and kisses Kobra warmly.

He won’t lie to himself – he’d still give up Kobra to have Mikey back. He thinks Kobra feels the same. But right now, this is what they have, and Poison will fucking take it.

 

 


	4. EPILOGUE: if it takes all night.

 

****November 3, 2010****

 

 

Poison is strumming away on Jet’s guitar, singing to himself, when he hears Kobra come inside, the wind blowing sand in behind him before he can force it shut again. The weather’s been shitty, it’s making everything harder.

“Did you get the codes?” Poison calls out. He should put the guitar away, but he can feel the melody in the tips of his fingers, ready to be discovered.

He hears Kobra set his helmet down with more force than necessary. Bad news then. “We have the right location, but Nova won’t help. He fucking lectured me about _suicide missions_ , how we should stay focused on the album and the tour and _saving the world_ ,” Kobra says, his anger evident in his voice.

Poison sighs. Not having the key codes is going to make breaking into SCARECROW headquarters a fuckload more difficult. “Have to do it the messy way, then. We’ll manage.”

“We will,” Kobra agrees. It’s Grace, it’s not like they have another choice. Nova is insane if he thinks he can make the Killjoys give up on her. Poison has heard all Nova’s arguments before. That their music and Fall Out Boy’s will reach so many people, will influence politics and maybe bring real change. _Save Rock and Roll_ , and all that shit. The Youngbloods can’t seem to understand that big-picture thinking just isn’t enough.

They love Grace, she’s part of their family, and in any other world that would be reason enough to risk their lives for her. In the world as they know it, things usually aren’t so clean-cut. Poison can admit (if only to himself) that he would leave her behind if he had to. Luckily, he has every justification he needs to play the hero this time. SCARECROW could easily use Grace to get to Dr. Death-Defying, to shut down his whole operation - and if Dr. D goes down, so does the radio station, and with it the entire zone rebel network. Activism and politicking won’t be worth shit if there’s no zonerunners left on the ground to do the dirty work. The Killjoys can’t leave the ‘zones until they know the station is secure.

“What are you working on?” Kobra asks, more gently. He pulls a chair over and sits in front of Poison, stretching his foot out so their toes are touching. After so long together, even contact through the thick leather of their boots is enough to make Poison feel a little calmer, ease the tension in his chest.

“Wanna hear? I could use your opinion,” Poison says, waits for Kobra to nod and smile at him, their private smile. Poison unwinds that much more for having seen it. He picks up from the beginning of the bridge, building off a riff that Ghoul had been working on a while back. He sings along, trying to make his fingers bend the chords around the lyrics he hasn’t been able to get out of his head for the last week.

 

_“You’re the broken glass in the morning light,_

_Be a burning star if it takes all night._

_So just save yourself and I’ll hold them back tonight."_

 

As soon as Poison stops playing, Kobra tilts Poison’s face up for a kiss that’s passionate and eager, shorthand for _I’d fuck you right here if I thought we had the time_. When Kobra releases his mouth, Poison grins up at him. “So you like it?”

Kobra kisses him again, soft and brief. “You should finish it for the album.”

_If we survive_ , Poison doesn’t say. It’s best not to speak some things out loud. If they get the chance, they will do a lot of things – record the last few songs that will make up Danger Days, travel to Europe for the World Contamination Tour, which everyone in their network is convinced will spark the activism movement that might save America. They’ll have more sex, eat real food again, help lead the revolution.

But duty comes first, no compromises. If they have to die for Grace, they die, and Panic! At the Disco can take their place supporting Fall Out Boy on tour. The movement will carry on, as it has to.

Poison puts the guitar carefully back into its case, and pulls Kobra into his lap instead. They’ve had their entire lives together in one way or another, and it still doesn’t feel like enough time. Poison holds Kobra close and lets himself be soothed by his mate’s fingers carding through his hair. There’s nothing much left that’s worth saying. “Love you,” Poison murmurs, even though Kobra already knows.

“Love you too,” Kobra answers. “We can do this. We’ll save her.”

Poison closes his eyes, and listens. In that deep inner place where they’re bound together, Kobra is echoing his own song back to him, adding bass, rhythm guitar, filling out the sound.

 

_Can you save yourself tonight?_

 

(END)

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please check out the amazing art and mix created for this fic!
> 
> [Rescued](https://26days.livejournal.com/96428.html) by 26days
> 
> [The Ways at Rest](http://imjustfine.tumblr.com/post/92760572578/the-ways-at-rest-youre-a-lighthouse-ive) and  
> [The Ways at Rest GIF version](http://imjustfine.tumblr.com/post/92760566373/the-ways-at-rest-youre-a-lighthouse-ive) by imjustfine
> 
> Go, explore, and let them know how awesome they are!


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